


The Trip

by extree



Series: Higher Education [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Marijuana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:25:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extree/pseuds/extree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle and Professor Gold are about to head on a poorly planned world trip together. Seven scenes, five stops in five rooms in five cities. Ungraded papers, chocolate, pot cookies, pretty lights, champagne, phonology fun and clothes shopping, and home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fifteen Minutes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnessina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnessina/gifts).



> Okay, so I guess I ended this series, but then I got a couple of nice comments (thank you!) saying they wouldn't mind more of these two, and then it turned out I wasn't actually done writing them. My hands slipped. As always, Magnessina's been a massive help and has made the process of writing this ten times more fun. You're the best.

“Come to bed.”  
“I think you’ll find I already have.”  
“Come to _bed_ , you insufferable pedant,” Belle repeated. She sat up, one hand sinking down into the mattress behind her to support her weight, the other finding its way to Gold’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze to get his attention.  
“I have something I need to do first, sweetheart.”  
“I know, but it’s not what you think it is,” she purred. He huffed and snickered softly, but when she slid her hand closer to his nape to idly scratch, the sound of his laughter turned just the faintest bit strained, and she saw the muscles of his back shift under his skin. He slept shirtless. Belle appreciated that.

When she suggested they head to bed and he agreed to come up in five minutes, she hadn’t expected her Gold to bring up a stack of papers with him. She didn’t even really fully register it at first, because he’d walked into the room and put them on the dresser so he could start unbuttoning his shirt, and how was she supposed to notice anything else in the room when he did that? Big hands deftly and swiftly undoing button after button, revealing more and more skin until the shirt slid from his shoulders and fell to a chair next to the dresser. He didn’t look at her (if he had, he would have seen her ogling him over the edge of her book, biting down on her appreciative if _slightly_ lecherous smirk) but Belle suspected he knew she was watching. Why else take off his shirt in front of her and then disappear into the adjoining bathroom to put on his pajama bottoms? Either way, she appreciated it. But then he had come back out of the bathroom and instead of launch himself at her (which Belle thought was rather the point of coming to bed) he sat cross-legged on the bed with the stack of papers in his lap, a pen in his hand, and a look on his face Belle recognized as the usual look of simultaneous amusement and disappointment he always seemed to have whenever he was faced with a student’s obvious incomprehension of anything he’d been trying to teach them all semester long.

“Don’t you have assistants to deal with that?”  
“They’ve got their own deadlines at the moment,” he muttered, not even affording her a quick, acknowledging glance.  
“But why do you have to do it now?” she almost whined, shutting her book and putting it aside.  
“Because I tried to do it earlier, but you wouldn’t let me then, either. Remember?”  
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you not enjoy yourself, then?”

She wasn’t playing fair and she knew it, but really now, why couldn’t he just get someone else to do it? What’s the point of being this mysteriously wealthy and intimidating figure if you’re not going to take advantage of your power in order to shirk your responsibilities and have a little fun? And alright, perhaps she’d been a little bit demanding today, when she had dragged him to the park with a promise to let him get started on those papers while she read up on the cities they planned to visit and they ended up making out like a couple of teenagers behind a tree instead, but he _could_ have said no. He never said no.

He sighed, but as she moved to sit up and scooted down the bed a little bit to sit nearer, she could see his mouth twitch up into a grin. He always knew when she was toying with him, but that was the thing about them; this play fighting, the teasing – it was just how they liked it. And oh, sure, he would grumble and roll his eyes and pretend not to pick up on her hints, or tease her; wind her up and make her feel like she was a sexually insatiable force of nature, but that’s just how they played together. Until, of course, the game was up and they crashed into one another with unspeakable force. They were inevitable. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You know fully well I did. I don’t even mind the grass stains on my suit,” he muttered, his grin growing wider. “But I really have to start making a dent in these, love. It’s getting urgent. Just give me twenty more minutes, and I’m all yours.”  
“Twenty?” she asked, indignant. “I’ll give you fifteen. Starting right now.”  
“Fine, my little tyrant. Fifteen it is.”

She kissed his shoulder as if to seal the deal, and blindly reached for one of many books that had somehow gradually made it from her bookshelf at home to the nightstand next to his bed in the span of a week. Fifteen minutes of reading. Hm. She could swing that. Probably. Well, it would have helped if the book she was reading wasn’t quite so dry. Heaven knows Belle was more than an avid reader, but literature simply took a back seat with him so close and warm and half naked and her sights set on him. Belle was many things, but impatient had never been one of them – that was, until this man had kissed her on that rooftop and left her wanting more, much more, and it always came on quick and strong like a sudden gust of wind that almost knocked her off her feet. Each and every time. She’d be going about her business, and then suddenly she’d just _want_ him, and that was the first wave, which was intense enough, but then, oh God, that second wave. That second wave of knowing she could just _have_ him. That was something else.

Fifteen minutes. Well. Perhaps not? She kept the book in her hand, with her thumb between the pages for a makeshift bookmark, and reached out with her other hand to trace his spine with a single fingertip – from the small of his back sliding slowly up, leaving goosebumps.

“Belle,” he warned, voice low and textured; the exact opposite of the deterrent it was meant to be.

“You know,” she started with a small, theatrical sigh, “I always liked it when I came into your office and you were working on something. Grading papers or whatever it was you were doing. Because you’d look up, and you’d smile, and you’d tell me to have a seat, but then you’d take a minute to finish up, and I could just watch you work.”  
Nothing but the sound of his pen scratching against the paper. Her hand at his nape, now, Belle drew circles on the skin.  
“Did you ever notice me staring while you were doing that?”  
“Can’t say I did.”  
“Well. I couldn’t look away,” she continued, tangling her fingers in his soft hair. “You looked so focused, you know? Stern. Strict. I loved watching you strike out entire paragraphs. Know what my favorite part was?”  
“Can’t imagine.”  
“When you’d finished, and you put down your pen, and you looked up at me and for a second there, you still had that sort of angry, critical, intense look on your face. That look just... did something to me.”  
She couldn’t hear his pen move against the paper anymore. She had him hooked. Now to reel him in. She released his hair, pulled her hand back and opened her book again to glue her eyes to the page, knowing fully well she wasn’t going to read a single word.  
“I wanted you to look at me like that and pull me up from that chair to bend me over your desk.”

Check. The stack of papers and his pen fell to the floor and then he was on her – one hand encircling her wrist, the other snatching away her book and placing it open and face down on the night stand (didn’t want her to lose her place – how very considerate of him) but then his hands were at her hips, and his fingers sank into the flesh as he pulled her further down the bed. Her heart beating loudly in her chest, Belle wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down so she could breathe in the scent of him and let it drive her over the brink with lust, but she couldn’t. Because before she could move, he had both her wrists caught in one of his hands, gently but firmly pushed into the mattress above her head. The other hand creeped up her leg, sliding up between her thighs and she grinned and refused to part them, because she liked to be a little contrary sometimes. She loved the look in his eyes when he caught on that she was very much planning on being just the tiniest bit devious, that she was in the mood to tease and be challenged in return. So when he laughed – low and dark and dangerous – and tried to push his hand further up between her thighs, Belle giggled and pressed them even closer together. Keeping him there. Trapping him. Making sure he couldn’t pull back, challenging him to try and move closer to where, really, they both wanted that hand to be.

“So, this is what you want, then?”

She grinned, quirked an eyebrow and gave him a slow, exaggerated nod. Big softie acting like it was a rhetorical question and he wasn’t seriously making sure. Even with that crooked smirk, that gruff voice and those dark, meaningful eyes making her squirm under his intense stare, he wasn’t about to let her forget that she was in control and could call him to heel like a faithful dog any time she wanted, and _fuck_ , he was perfect. She lost the game when he leaned down and grazed his teeth against her neck; she gasped and his hand slid up and right where she needed it, a shock to her system, making her buck towards him and breathe in sharp between her teeth. He chuckled again and pulled away from her neck, giving her an amused look, but he was clearly affected by the shameless state of her; his lips slightly parted and his eyes glazed over with lust.

“Already, hm?”  
“Touching you does that to me,” she breathed with a little shrug and a smirk.  
“Does it, now?”  
“Mm. Anywhere. If I touch you anywhere, it feels electric,” she murmured. _And it’s only ever been that way with you._ But she didn’t voice that. She knew that if she did, he would soften, lose that fire in his eyes and the edge to his voice and melt into her. He would release her wrists and gently wrap his arms around her instead. Which was wonderful, really, when he did that. She adored his softness. But good God she liked where this was heading, and she wasn’t about to derail that train, so with a faint husky quality to her voice and a smirk pulling her lips crooked, she added, “Professor.”

Well that seemed to have surprised him, with his eyebrows raised and incredulous laughter bursting from his lips for just a brief moment until he fell silent and stared her right down, his hand perfectly still between her thighs even as she tried to move her hips to either find some friction or spur him on. His gorgeous dark eyes like an endless source of warmth pinned her in place even more effectively than his hands did, and when he licked his lips, Belle couldn’t help but buck up against him again.

“You’ve done enough touching for now, Ms. French,” he growled. And some part of her would surely be ashamed for being that turned on by their little role play (is it still role play when at one point, it had been a reality?) if anyone were ever to find out, but this was just him and her alone – their perfect, dirty, beautiful secret – and with his fingers finally inside her and his dark stare burning hot on her face, there was not a single coherent thought left in her mind. Just him.

He teased and and pulled her strings one by one for God knows how long, and she writhed and moaned and pleaded for more, because that was exactly the person she was with him – shameless and eager and unstoppable. His one hand was hot between her thighs, the other still pinned her wrists, and his mouth was at her ear murmuring encouragements and nipping at all her sensitive spots, until she came hard with her teeth sinking into his shoulder and his little hiss of pain muffled in the crook of her neck.

Out of breath, sweating, Belle opened her eyes to find her lover gazing down at her, his eyes a deep black in the soft bedroom lamplight, traveling over her face as if he were looking for something. Slowly, he loosened the grip on her wrists, but she didn’t really think to move at all; her arms simply relaxed and stayed there, up over her head.

“Alright?”

She nodded and murmured a soft, “Fantastic,” making him smile. As he moved up over her to brush his lips against one wrist and then the other, Belle noticed a red, indented mark on his shoulder and gasped softly at the sight. She didn’t break the skin or anything, and she really hadn’t bitten that hard, but she hadn’t realized and, God, the things he brought out in her were just... To think she had that in her all this time. Just waiting for the right person to come along and open the floodgates.

“I’m sorry about that, lover,” she murmured, brushing a fingertip over the shallow imprint of her teeth. He hummed low in his throat and mumbled, “No matter. I’ve had my rabies shot.”  
“Oh ha ha ha,” she said, trying very hard to approach his well-practiced deadpan delivery, but the laughter hiding in her chest threatened to bubble up regardless; audible just under the surface of her voice. He didn’t scoff when she called him ‘lover’ anymore. It hadn’t taken that long for him to adjust to it, all things considered. Good. It suited him, because that was exactly what he was. Who he was.

“I think I rather liked it, anyway. Ferocious.”  
Did he now? That was good to know. He tugged the hem of the oversized t-shirt she used as a nightgown back down her thighs, but then slid his arms around her, rolled over and pulled her on top of him with a devious smirk. She squealed in surprise.

“Don’t you have papers to grade? I thought it was ‘getting urgent’?” she purred, moving to sit up and straddle his thighs.  
“Yes, well, I’ve had a chance to reconsider my priorities.”  
“So you’re coming to bed?” she asked, an eyebrow raised and a smug grin on her face. His hands slid up her thighs a little bit, fingertips disappearing just under the hem of her shirt. She pushed her palms into his chest and leaned on him, at which he produced an exaggerated _oomph_ , prompting her to roll her eyes. He laughed at her reaction but it was affectionate, not cruel, and she smiled right back.  
“Mm. I’ll do it on the way to the airport and toss them out the window somewhere near campus if I have to.”  
“Good. Your fifteen minutes are up, anyway,” she teased.  
“But I barely got five minutes of grading done before-” he started and trailed off, confusion clearly legible in his face; deep lines in his forehead, his eyes narrowed. She giggled and slid her hands further down his chest, letting her fingertips ghost over his stomach. God, Belle loved it when she had him stumped. She saw him swallow and his tongue flick out against his lips, and then the tension in his face melted away to make place for a look of sudden realization, and, “Oh.” Finally.  
“Fifteen minutes until you were all mine, remember? How you used those fifteen minutes was all up to you,” Belle lilted, hooking her fingers just below his waistband, leaning the weight of her upper body on his hips that way.  
“You’re a clever little terror, aren’t you?”

She nodded, grinning like mad until he took her wrists and swept her arms out from under her, making her come crashing down to his chest with a little squeal and a giggle. Their fingers interlaced and her lips against the skin of his neck, his pulse fluttering underneath, she shifted her legs and hips to cover him completely and felt him hard against her thigh.

“You love it, really.”  
“Always.”


	2. Bittersweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle and Professor Gold in a hotel room with a box of Belgian chocolates and a little bit of mutual curiosity. Sometimes that's all you need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit longer, this one. Thank you for the nice comments and kudos, as always. <3

The windows were wide open and in came the smell of sweet baked goods and the sound from the market down below of happy busy chatter in a language neither of them understood on a warm breeze that made the curtains dance. Their room wasn’t that big, but the ceilings were tall, and everything but the wrought iron bed and the antique wooden furniture was a pristine white, and he wouldn’t have traded this room for a palace even if it came with a royal title and a small army of waiting staff.

Belle was lying on the bed in a billowy yellow summer dress, poring over a box of Belgian chocolates like some sort of goddess of excess with her bare feet up in the air, swaying. He watched her while he sat on the windowsill and smoked the first cigarette he’d had in days, blowing white curls of smoke out of the window. They’d arrived in the middle of a heat wave that had taken the country by surprise, but that tall ceiling was one hell of a blessing; the warm air floated up and stayed there, leaving the rest of the room bearable. Pleasant, even.

“This one looks good,” she said, holding up another chocolate between her fingers for him to see. He couldn’t tell it apart from the one she ate before that; both had been little white cubes. She sank her teeth into it, smiled and chewed and then showed him the creamy praline filling. She put the rest of it in her mouth and he couldn’t help but chuckle at the bulge in her cheek. His oversized Australian hamster in a gorgeous dress. His own cheeks, on the other hand, hollowed as he took another drag from his cigarette and filled his lungs.

Her eyes were on him as she chewed and sucked on the chocolate and slowly her lips curled up into a certain smile that Gold knew to mean she was gearing up to ask or tell him something a little... Well. Usually it started something that either ended in bed, or with him making some sort of embarrassing confession. At least they had a room this time. Last time she’d smiled at him like that (the night before, in fact) and asked him something a little forward, they were leaving a cosy little cafe late at night, fueled by wine and local artisan beer and a tipsy edition of their favorite game of teasing words and touches, and he had had to pull her into an alley and pray to each and every god he didn’t believe in that no-one would hear her little giggles and cries and come looking. “Look, songbird,” he had told her then, whispering urgently in her ear as she clutched at his shirt. “You can be the vocal little thing you are, which I absolutely adore, or you can tempt me in public. But you need to pick one, sweetheart, because I’m a wee bit too old to be arrested for public indecency in a foreign country.” (She’d picked option number two, and she did fairly well at keeping quiet, but that was probably because she was also very _bitey_ that night.)

Whatever it was she was about to say or ask, Gold knew it wouldn’t be anything quite like last night. Because last night had been like an oxygen high, the both of them spurred on by a sudden urge to thrill and be thrilled in return, whereas now they were in the middle of a dreamy, sleepy sea – no waves, barely any ripples – and the air was sweet, warm and heavy around them, slowing their thoughts until they were almost suspended in the room. No weed, no beer or wine, just cigarettes, chocolate and summer. And happiness, he supposed. Yes, that was it.

“You said you saw my ex-boyfriend around.”  
And there it was. This seemed relatively tame, though. Good. He could finish his cigarette, then.

“When was that, dear?”  
“On the roof, remember?”  
“Ah, yes. I remember, now. That day you got your professor high as a kite and seduced him.”  
“Shut up!” she laughed, then sticked out her tongue. Even if he hadn’t been there in the room when she had declared war on that box of chocolates, he would definitely have been able to tell, now. He chuckled and shrugged, because really, that was the long and short of it. Wasn’t his fault it sounded ridiculous when he summarized it.  
“I was just wondering how you knew he was my boyfriend.”  
“Saw you holding hands once or twice. I just assumed you were an item,” he said.  
“Oh. I see. And, were you ever jealous?” she asked, her smile growing into a devilish smirk. “I mean, did you already fancy me when you saw us together?”

Ah, so that’s what this was about. He rolled his eyes and shook his head in feigned disapproval, but he couldn’t deny that he was rather tickled by her curiosity. Before that unreal episode on the roof, before they’d kissed and went on that date and fucked on every available surface in his house, when she was still in his classes and he still had to pretend that whatever it was that was happening between them wasn’t happening at all, most of his energy went into trying to ignore his feelings or her hints and peculiar looks – and bloody hell, she didn’t make it easy for him at the time. Not with her first row smiles and cheeky looks and that tongue peeking out from between her lips when she was concentrating on taking notes. But he had managed with pure self-delusion and determination. Because he had to.

Gold sighed and took another long drag from his cigarette, wondering what answer she was looking for, and what the truth was, exactly. He had been so focused then on trying not to feel too strongly, not to look for too long or smile too often, that he wasn’t quite sure what it had actually felt like anymore. This thing they had together now had displaced the memories of those days with all its fire and intensity. Seeing her, wanting her and not being able to have her was a strange, distant dream, now.

“I was jealous,” she offered when his silence lasted a little too long for her liking, “when I saw you talk to other students and it looked a little chummy.”  
“Did I ever look chummy with any of my students? Because I certainly didn’t intend to.”  
“I know that wasn’t your _intent_. But you could never keep up your grumpy professor act if someone managed to impress you. It was cute, actually,” she giggled, “because suddenly you’d be all smiley for a little while until you realized other people were watching, and you had to do a complete 180 and put that grumpy face back on. So vulnerable without that mask.”

Dissecting him (well, he supposed it was more of a vivisection while he was still breathing) seemed to be a little hobby of hers. Like a surgeon in an operating theater, she would slice him open with those words of hers and talk him through each and every step as he lay wide open on the table, pulling out this organ and then that, showing him truths he’d never known about himself and then carefully, kindly sewing him up again. And if she had accidentally poked at an old wound and brought back an old, forgotten pain, she would always tear off her surgical mask and kiss it better. No hesitation.

He stubbed out the cigarette butt and placed a second one between his lips, shaking his head at his own strange thoughts. No, that was wrong. That was all wrong. What a shite metaphor he’d come up with. Belle would have done better, no doubt about that. There was nothing clinical about her. Nothing cold and sterile about the way she made him into a story he didn’t mind hearing. She put him into words and made some sort of sense of his fractured self, that’s what it was. And when she was done telling her story, somehow he’d always like himself a little better.

“I was jealous because I wanted to be the only one who impressed you.”

He chuckled silently and lit his cigarette. Good excuse to look away from her piercing blue stare for a moment. He knew it was ridiculous of him at this point, but she still managed to render him speechless with her honesty and openness. It was new to him. Because, God, here was a woman who was stunningly gorgeous and intelligent and endlessly interesting, kind and caring, and she kept telling and showing him that she was all his, but he still hadn’t been able to wrap his head around it. And he knew Belle didn’t like it when he doubted her, or when he responded to her compliments with self-deprecation, so what he had been doing on this little world trip, for the most part, was pretending. Pretending to think it possible and even normal that this beautiful creature wanted to be with him. Wanted him to touch her. Wanted him to be jealous of that pig-eyed academic disaster of an ex-boyfriend.

He couldn’t fool himself into thinking she didn’t see right through him, but perhaps she realized what he himself had discovered only recently; that pretending was good practice, and that little by little, he had started to get better at accepting this reality of theirs. Because there had been plenty of moments on this trip when he hadn’t actively thought it a miracle when she insisted on holding his hand everywhere they walked (no matter how short the distance), or kissed him under flickering streetlights, or looked at his naked body with nothing but adoration and lust in her eyes, but instead simply accepted it as an inevitability – a comfortable, wonderful reality. It was getting easier. But it still wasn’t easy.

“If I was jealous then, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to dwell on it, because you were my student, and I wasn’t about to get myself into trouble. Nor you, for that matter.”  
“I guess I can live with that answer,” she said softly, sighing as she picked another chocolate from the golden box to inspect.

Was she pouting? Was she actually, honestly pouting right now? There was that lower lip of hers jutting out just a little bit before she stuffed an entire chocolate in her mouth and her legs – cheerfully swaying in the air just a moment before – now fell limp to the bed like two drooping flowers flattened in a rainstorm. Yes. She was pouting, alright. And even though he caught her sneaking a quick glance to make sure he had noticed her adorable passive-aggressive display of disappointment, he could tell it wasn’t all playful role play, either. She cared. His beautiful pouting chocolate-fiend cared.

That dramatic little pout of hers had touched him, somehow. They really weren’t like this; she wasn’t needy (well, not in an emotional sense; a case could be made that she was rather demanding in other aspects – aspects he would never in a million years even think to complain about) and he wasn’t some possessive buffoon who raged at the mere mention of some poor 20-something fuckwit whose only crime, so far, was to have been lucky enough to have been on the receiving end of Belle French’s affections despite being entirely undeserving. They were better than that, and they would never be that simple and clear cut. But apparently there was this small part of her – probably the part that bought those silly romance novels and kept them right next to her text books and Ulysses – that rather liked the thought of falling into those classic patterns. Even if just for a little while. Just for fun.

And in fact, he did seem to remember feeling an annoying little twinge in his stomach those few times their paths crossed and that smug-looking shite had his arm around her waist. They always smiled at each other when they passed in the hallways, but when _he_ was with her, the experience was a special kind of unpleasant. Her eyes would light up in the same way they always did, but then her smile would falter and she’d bite down on her lip and give him a look that was almost apologetic. It was ridiculous. It made him want to stop her and make some sort of excuse for her to see him in his office just to get her away from that boy, but he knew that if he did that, he would be riding on that sudden wave of jealousy and desperate need for her affection, and that once inside, alone with his favorite student, behind a locked door and with nothing to back up his excuse to get her there, he might fall apart at the seams and say or do something he would regret. Something he wanted to. Something that, in those moments where his ache for her was so raw and bypassed all rational thought, he knew in his heart she wanted, too. And then the mismatched pair of them simply walked on, just passed him by, and the boiling sea of emotion would settle and leave him just as in denial as he was before.

Well, fuck. He could have sworn he was a lot more cool and collected back then than how he remembered it now, but he had spent an inordinate amount of effort and time trying to minimize their little... thing, after all. Perhaps, now that there was no need for any of that, it was all coming back. Full force.

“Alright, fine. Perhaps I wanted to break his hands,” he sighed. Of course, that was one hell of an exaggeration, but it seemed to have done the trick, because her eyes lit up.  
“Oh, stop it,” she mock chided him. If she was trying to hide her pleasure, she wasn’t doing a very good job – that twinkle in her eye that made his heart swell and the corners of his mouth pull up as if the law of gravity didn’t apply to them was impossible to overlook.  
“He wasn’t using them to write any papers, anyway,” he added for good measure, noting with some satisfaction that now _she_ was trying not to smirk.  
“That’s not very nice of you,” she teased in a slightly lowered voice, making him chuckle and nod in agreement, sighing, “Indeed it’s not,” as he tapped the ashes from his still burning cigarette down into the street below with an elegant flourish.  
“But I’m glad you told me.”

Well, obviously. She’d been fishing for it, and he had swum up to the fishing line and hooked himself willingly, because he couldn’t see a single reason why he shouldn’t indulge her if what she wanted was something he was willing to give. Lucky for him, she didn’t have an expensive gambling habit. Books, chocolate, weed, sex on tap and even embarrassing confessions – that he could do.

“Like the violent imagery, do you?”  
“No, not at all” she said softly, shrugging. “I just like knowing you cared, then. I know there was no way we could have, you know... Well, we wouldn’t have. Right?”

Her smile had turned a little melancholy and the sight pulled at his heart and drew him towards her, his muscles moving before his brain had fully become conscious of that decision. He flicked his cigarette butt out of the window and moved towards the bed, sitting on the edge with his upper body turned towards her. It seemed almost reflexive, the way she shifted closer and turned to lie on her back and rest her head against his thigh. Magnetic.

“Right,” he replied, brushing away some wayward strands of hair, then sliding a finger gently down the side of her face, following her jaw, until with a small smile he noticed a little bit of chocolate at the corner of her mouth and wiped it off.  
“And I’m glad we waited,” said Belle, thanking him for that little act of grooming with a brief flicker of a smile before her thoughtful look took over again and made her knit her eyebrows together, “but I just like hearing how you felt about me then, I guess.”  
She felt that irrational sadness for lost time too, didn’t she? They had done everything exactly right, but still the knowledge that they could have had each other long before... Well. He wasn’t sure if that would ever go away.

“I was very,” he murmured, leaning down and letting his hair fall to tickle her face, “very,” he leaned even closer and grinned at the way she was trying not to laugh, “ _very_ taken with you.”

And then she did giggle, and he was torn between kissing her or letting her laughter infect him, so instead he went with a third option and gently lifted her head from his lap so he could crawl onto the bed to lie next to her, on his stomach, and simply took her in. She was perfection – even after a long day of trudging around cobblestone streets from antique stores to book stores, to museums and coffee houses in ridiculously high heels and with his limping self hooked to her arm for an anchor. She folded her arms back and under her head so she could stare him down with those eyes he was running out of ways to describe.

Perhaps it was his turn to ask a question. Something he’d secretly been curious about.

“What did you see in him, Belle?”  
“Nothing much, to be honest,” she answered. “It was a friend of the family kind of thing. So, convenience, I guess? And he was nice enough, at first.”  
“At first?”  
Those two words hit him squarely in the chest like a sack of bricks, and his mind was flooded with unwelcome images that made his stomach clench and his hands tighten into fists for just a moment until he caught himself, took a deep breath and tried to will down the oncoming fury.  
“No, no, don’t worry. Not like that,” she assured him, rolling over on her stomach, then reaching over to brush her fingers against his cheek. Already the heat in his chest subsided, making room for him to breathe deep again. She was magic. “It just got really dull really fast.”  
“I’m not above taking a flight back right now and acting out aforementioned violent imagery if he laid a hand on you in anger, Belle.”  
“But he didn’t, and you shouldn’t, and we should stop talking about him,” spoke the blue-eyed, brown-haired pacifist with her belly full of chocolates and her fingers in his hair now, soothing him and making every bit of tension in his body melt away. Like putty in her hands. She wasn’t just trying to placate him; it was the truth. He could tell. He’d never really caught her in a lie to know the difference, but that was irrelevant. He’d know.

“You’re the one who brought him up,” he muttered.  
“Only so we could talk about how much _you_ fancied me back then!”  
“You know.”  
“But you’re good at hiding how you feel,” she replied in a softer voice.  
“Used to be, maybe.”  
“Because you- we. Because we had to.”  
“Mhm. Not anymore.”

He inched closer, wriggling sideways on the bed until their bodies were touching side to side and her sweet chocolatey breath felt warm against his folded arms. He could kiss her any time he wanted. He still couldn’t fully comprehend it, but it was true that he could kiss this miracle of a woman any fucking time he wanted. So he wriggled to rest on his side, draped one arm over her waist, stretched his neck and captured her smiling lips between his own. She tasted so unbearably sweet he felt the urge to light up another cigarette to balance it out.

“Too sweet,” he grumbled after breaking their soft kiss, scrunching his nose and making her laugh.  
“Well, here,” she replied, and before he knew what was happening, she had reached over him where the box of chocolates still stood to fish something out, and he only had a split second to see what it was, because she had simply slid it between his lips before he had a chance to protest.

He bit through the chocolate and as it started to melt, he realized there was very little sweetness to speak of. Because it was dark chocolate, bitter and deep, and when she broke off the piece he had in his mouth to take a little bite herself, he tasted liqueur – heady and rich, and somehow complementing the taste of cigarettes still clinging to his tongue. She didn’t seem to like it as much, with her nose scrunching the way his had in reaction to the cloying sweetness still stuck to her lips, but then she kissed him again, both sweet and bitter and patient and urgent, and this? This was perfect; her sweet, sticky lips kissing his until he had to break away in order to swallow.

She had a little blush and a shy smile on her face, his Belle, blinking at him, sneaking glances at his lips. They both knew where this was leading and it was palpable in the air, prickling his skin like static electricity and making the hair at the back of his neck stand up in anticipation. He didn’t think there was anything more erotic in the world than the idea of being desired by her. Nothing as improbable, either.

“I didn’t mind that one, I have to say,” he murmured in his softer voice, the one that came natural to him whenever their bodies were this close.  
“Of course you didn’t. You’re a dark chocolate sort of guy. I knew that,” spoke Belle, and when he opened his mouth to respond, she slid what was left of their shared chocolate in his mouth and then yelped and giggled when he snapped at her fingers and drew them into his mouth, too.

“Ew, they’re all sticky, now,” she whined, pulling back her index finger and thumb with a soft _pop_ as they escaped from his lips, and he laughed dark and low. She really should have seen that coming.

But he, too, really should not have been that affected when after he’d swallowed the last of the chocolate, she pressed that sticky fingertip against his bottom lip and gave him a smirk with slightly narrowed eyes that almost made his heart stop in his chest. God, she’d be the death of him one day.

“Aren’t you going to clean me up?”

And it would all have been worth it.


	3. Moderation I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new city, a new room. What on earth would Belle and Professor Gold get up to in a city that has legalized the sale and consumption of cannabis in certain establishments?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are so sweet. Thank you for the comments and kudos, as always. This chapter might be a little weirder than the others, as there's a lot of weed involved. (As there should be!) Just a heads up: Probably no daily updates after this chapter. I'll have to see how it works out.

Belle’s first ever pot cookie tasted really good, which was something of a surprise. She wasn’t overly fond of the smell of cannabis those times she had smoked it with Gold, and she hadn’t expected it to taste any better, but mostly this just tasted like a normal cookie. Why hadn’t they done this before? Could she try to bake these at home? Would these have the same analgesic effect on him? Because if that was the case, that would be a brilliant way to relieve his pain and have their fun in places they couldn’t smoke. Not that she minded the smoke all that much. In fact, she rather liked the intimacy of sharing a joint. Plus, she could always do with more reasons to stare at Gold’s lips, and perhaps most importantly; she wouldn’t give up their little shotgunning habit for anything in the world. So with her belly full and waiting for her favorite person to come back from the bathroom, Belle French sat daydreaming at a table in what was deceptively called a coffeeshop, but was actually just a clever legalized excuse to get high away from home.

She could picture them on a picnic blanket in the park, nibbling on cookies or cakes or whatever it was she’d baked, getting high, giggling and talking nonsense, cuddling and maybe napping, and no-one would suspect a thing. All that any passers-by would see would be two fools stuffing their faces with baked goods, laughing at nothing and then falling silent every once in a while for lazy kisses. She wasn’t much of a cook, and she hadn’t baked a thing in her life, but the idea was starting to take hold of her, and she knew for sure that she could learn if she really set her mind to it. She’d make frosting from scratch and everything. Maybe buy some edible glitter? It would have to be gold glitter, of course. Belle almost snorted at her own silly thoughts. It was a ridiculous little daydream, but it felt like it would be so perfect for them. Just the right amount of domesticity with a bit of a twist. She could spend lazy Sunday mornings baking, and he would help (or just try to distract her) and afterwards, with a basket full of pot-laced goodies, they could walk to the park and get themselves just the teensiest bit stoned.

A few assumptions, there, of course; the major one being that they would spend those lazy Sunday mornings together, and not apart. Maybe she was being a little bit presumptuous, imagining herself in his kitchen, in his pretty house, and nowhere else. The fact that they hadn’t spent a single night apart since their first date didn’t necessarily mean anything, after all. Or did it? She’d been so busy compensating for Gold’s occasional bouts of insecurity with her endless optimism, she hadn’t really taken the time to examine her own feelings too closely. All she knew (and all that mattered while they were still on their trip and life back home was on pause) was that she loved spending time with this man with the lovely hair and the golden brown eyes who always looked at her with such adoration it made her breath catch in her throat each and every time. That was the simplest truth she could pin down, and it was enough for the moment.

Ah, and there he was, back from the bathroom. Good, because the cookie she had just practically inhaled had been so delicious, she had been sorely tempted to take a bite from his. But what was that strange look on his face when he approached the table and stood still for a few seconds, just staring at their plates before slowly sitting down?

“Belle,” he said softly, brow furrowed, finger pointing at her empty plate, “did you just eat that entire thing while I was in the bathroom?”  
“Yeah! It was really good. You better get started on yours because it’s looking very tempting right now.”

His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, and just when she thought he was about to explain himself, he started laughing instead. His hand flew up to cover his mouth, his eyes flitting from her empty plate to her bewildered face and back again. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine why he was so shocked. He and her both knew who got the last slice of pizza 90 percent of the time, and after only two movie nights together, they’d both come to the conclusion that there would just be less of a mess if she was the one to hold the popcorn bowl in her lap. He’d seen her go through that box of Belgian chocolates not too long ago, hadn’t he? He knew what he’d signed up for.

“What? Should I have waited? I told you I was hungry,” she muttered, picking up a crumb that had fallen off her plate and onto the table and flicking it into her mouth with a loud crunch. That only seemed to make him laugh louder, though, and gorgeous as this man was when he laughed (eyes crinkling, twinkling, entirely boyish and charming) she wouldn’t have minded an explanation.

“You absolute amateur,” he chuckled, reaching over put his hand over hers. She couldn’t help it – the simple touch made her smile, even through the confusion and, at this point, _slight_ annoyance of not knowing what on earth was his problem.  
“Belle,” he continued in a graver tone, “you weren’t supposed to eat that all at once.”  
“What are you talking about? I mean I’ll admit it’s a big cookie, but...”

Oh. _Oh_. Oh no. Wasn’t she? Oh God. She grabbed at his hand covering hers and squeezed, because there was nothing else she could think to do short of rushing to the bathroom and throwing up, maybe, but he was looking at her so kindly that even though she was on the verge of a case of mild panic, his warmth (his hand, his eyes) grounded her a little bit and pulled her back within his field of gravity, where she knew she was safe.

“Is it bad? I haven’t overdosed, have I?”  
“No, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head and making a visible effort not to grin, “you’ll be fine. I wouldn’t be sitting here laughing at you if you were in trouble.” She nodded. Of course not. He’d have knocked over his chair, gathered her in his arms and carried her to a hospital if he thought she was in danger. Even with his ankle screaming in pain. Even if he had to carry her through hell. Or Mordor. “I just think we had better head back to our room before it kicks in.”  
“You think so? Will I freak out?”  
“Only if you keep worrying, love. Just stick this in your purse for me,” he said, handing her his own cookie, hastily wrapped in some napkins, “and let’s go. You’ll be fine.”

He took her by the hand and led her outside, where she hooked her arm into his and pulled herself closer to him. She couldn’t feel anything except a vague sense of alarm in the back of her mind, but she found that she could more or less drown that out by inwardly repeating his soothing words. She’d be fine. She’d be just fine. He’d know, and he wouldn’t lie, so Belle knew for certain that she would be fine.

Even still, she had never clung so tight to his arm as she did then, walking along the canal with the sun setting behind them. He spoke softly to her and answered her questions patiently and with only the tiniest hint of amusement in his voice – he was clearly trying not laugh at her, and she made a mental note to tell him how much she appreciated it later. But definitely not tonight, because she had stupidly gone and consumed a quantity of cannabis Gold had so eloquently described as being a “veritable fuck-ton for a non-habitual user to scarf down in one go,” and she thought it wise to keep any sincere thoughts and feelings to herself until she was well and truly stone-cold sober.

He explained how it would take longer to feel the effects than had she smoked it, how it would feel different, too, and that it could very well take longer to wear off than she might expect. He was trying to soothe her, and it was working. There was not a single trace of panic in her system, now. Just a certain warmth and the low, calm tones of his voice, and she had never felt safer.

The sun was setting low. Gulls flew overhead and screamed their song. An elderly cyclist rode by with a tiny white dog in a basket and once they had passed, Belle thought of something rather important.

“You’re not going to let me do this alone, are you?” she asked, leaning her head against his shoulder for a moment as they walked.  
“What? As in, am I going to dump you in the hotel room and leave you to your own, stoned-out-of-your-mind devices? No, of course not.”  
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, squeezing his arm as if for emphasis. “You’re going to eat your cookie too, right? Not all of it at once, like an idiot, but... please don’t stay sober while I’m paralytically high?”

His silence spoke a thousand apologetic words all at once, and it became crystal clear to Belle that he had taken it upon himself to babysit her through her imminent ordeal. And while that was very sweet of him, and probably exactly what she would have done had their roles been reversed, the thought of him taking on that responsibility when what they had planned was a pleasant, relaxed, if slightly giggly evening together was an anchor hooked to her ribs that dragged her down deep into a sea of guilt. That’s not what she wanted.

“Please?”

When he opened his mouth to protest, she stood still and hugged him as tight as she could, pinning his arms to his sides as if somehow she might be able to squeeze her own will into his body and make him change his mind. Whatever he had been about to say, the words weren’t coming out now; like she had squeezed so hard he simply had to swallow them. She knew she must have looked childish, but she was working against the clock, here, with a certain lightheadedness already right around the corner and Gold’s protective instincts having kicked in. In Belle’s mind, she had no choice but to pull out the big guns – which is why she tilted her head up and rested her chin on his shoulder, waiting for him to turn those beautiful brown eyes full of genuine concern to hers so she could flutter her lashes and declare victory.

It was shameful, really, and if the circumstances hadn’t been this dire, she wouldn’t have stooped that low. But it worked. Because when he turned his head to find her closer than he’d anticipated, she saw the resolve in his eyes dissipate and make way for that one look. God, that look. That look that always melted her heart. The one that made her feel like she was the most precious thing he’d ever seen. His lips were slightly parted as if she’d stolen his words away from him again – right out of his beautiful mouth – and his eyes slowly glided over her face without settling anywhere for too long. She felt his breath so close to her lips she almost forgot about everything else.

“Alright. I’ll eat one half of it now,” he muttered. She grinned and released him from her grip for just a moment so she could cup his face and pull him into a quick kiss, then reached into her bag, broke the cookie in two and gave him the slightly bigger half.  
“Thank you.”  
“Just keep telling me how you’re feeling, okay?”  
“Okay. I will.”  
“It’ll be fine.”  
“I know.”

She kissed him again, because why not? He was handsome and sweet and hers to kiss. With his arm tight around her waist and her lips insistent against his, the very last bit of her worry melted in the setting summer sun.

She didn’t feel much of anything until they had made it back to their room and she fell back onto the bed, at which point she could have sworn her brain had gotten loose in her skull somehow, spinning around and making her gasp, then laugh. She heard his voice coming from the other side of the room but she couldn’t quite make it out. He’d repeat himself it it was something important, right? Right.

“I think I’m dizzy,” she explained, remembering that he had asked her to tell him these things.  
“Dizzy’s normal,” he replied. Oh, good. Good news. Well, she already knew it was; she’d experienced it when they smoked, but it was still nice to hear him say it. Nice to hear his voice in general. His lovely voice.

Sprawled like an exhausted starfish on the bed, she stared at the ceiling for a little while. She hadn’t noticed the plaster detailing around the light fixture before. That was nice. Boring little thought to have, but then it was probably best to hold onto those boring thoughts for as long as she still had them. They’d be a luxury soon. When she tilted her head up, she saw Gold opening the windows with his shirt sleeves rolled up. When had he done that? Actually, how long had she been lying on the bed?

“Could there be weird time stuff?” Belle asked, sitting up straight and scooting to the head of the bed to lean back against the headboard.  
“Weird time stuff?” he repeated with a cocked eyebrow. “I think, considering you’ve just uttered the words ‘weird time stuff’, it’s safe to say you might be experiencing something like that, yes,” he chuckled, kicking off his shoes and joining her on the bed with the other half of his cookie. He put it on the night stand furthest away from her (good thinking) and then reached over to take her heels off for her, his large hands soft and gentle against her skin.  
“Thank you,” she giggled, and he gave her ankles a squeeze in response before scooting up on the bed to sit next to her.

“So this weird time stuff,” she continued, watching him take another bite from his cookie, “will it seem like time’s slowing down or speeding up?”  
“Hm. You won’t notice much of anything unless you keep looking at the clock. You could think an hour has passed, and then you check the clock and see it’s only been five minutes.”  
“Oh. I thought it might be, like-” She had to pause and laugh at herself, because already she felt herself getting into that ridiculous headspace where her thoughts were like slippery fish and she felt the need to overuse the word ‘like’ in order to get her point across. “Sort of like it would speed up, I guess, because I don’t really remember getting here. You know?”  
“That’s just you not paying attention to where you’re going,” he teased. She tore her eyes away from the ceiling and looked at him. He lay on his side, smiling at her in that amused way he always did when she was higher than him, or drunker than him, or more enthusiastic about a book or a paper or some silly little linguistic thing than he was. She didn’t mind that look; there was nothing mean or mocking about it. And she especially didn’t mind it now. It was a relief to see him smile like that, actually – to know that he wasn’t too burdened by her to have a little fun. There was a hint of watchfulness about him, still, but that smile was genuine. She could tell.

She reached over and poked his nose, because really, what else do you do when you’re stoned and you’ve got this adorably concerned man staring at you, looking for signs of discomfort or panic or whatever it was that she was supposed to be feeling at the moment. He smiled wider and poked her right back, and for some reason, that was like opening the floodgates, because all of the sudden she was laughing a loud belly laugh that made her entire body shake, and she couldn’t seem to stop, so she rolled over on her stomach and tried to muffle it in her pillow.

Ah. The giggles. Of course. She heard him laugh in the background and then felt his hand on her back. It was warm and big and heavy, and it felt a little bit like the weight of it was pushing her further into the mattress. But not in a bad way. Just safe. And it wasn’t really that heavy, of course. Her body was just being a bit weird, that was all. Or was it her brain?

“You doing alright, sweetheart?”  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she managed between giggles, hoping he could hear her because she had her face still firmly planted in her pillow.  
“Think I better try and catch up, now,” he muttered. When she looked up, she saw the last of his cookie disappear between his lips, and she grinned. Good. She didn’t want to be the only one making a fool of herself.

They lay there and laughed and talked about the most inconsequential things for what felt like forever. She didn’t want to check the clock for fear of getting obsessed with the way her perception of time was getting distorted, so instead she lay on her side and stared at Gold, who, very sweetly, let her. Everything was fine and pleasant, and she didn’t even mind the way she would say something, then hear herself say it, realize it sounded absolutely ridiculous and got stuck in another giggle fit, because he would always manage to pull her out of that loop somehow. He would touch her arm or ask her how she was feeling, catch her floating thoughts like frantic butterflies in his net and bring her back to him. Back to their bed. Their bubble. So yes, everything was fine.

Until she’d rolled onto her back again and noticed something about the ceiling that was more than a little disconcerting.

“The crack in the ceiling isn’t getting bigger, is it?” she asked quietly, as if speaking any louder would cause the entire ceiling to come down.  
“No, sweetheart.” He didn’t even look up.  
“I can see it, though. Look.”  
“Alright, I’ll look,” he added, and with a soft groan, he turned to lie on his back, too.

To Belle, it was slowly getting bigger, but somehow always reverting back to its original size so it could keep growing without splitting open and burying them in plaster and, quite possibly, the furniture from the room above. It was disturbing. It wasn’t real, but she was seeing it, and it was too much.

“I know it’s not actually growing, but-”

But what? What was she talking about? It wasn’t growing, end of story. Except it was, in some way; inside her head. Or her eyes. No, no – this was a sensory thing. It was her brain again.

“I’m not having the same effects as you are,” he said, “but you’re still good, love.”  
“Yeah? I never had this when we smoked.”  
“You ate a lot more than you ever smoked in one sitting with me. It’s perfectly fine.”  
“But will you look a bit longer? Please?”

She didn’t know why it was so important for him to see that crack expand, but for some reason, the thought had latched on to the inside of her skull like a strange and unwelcome little octopus suctioning itself to an aquarium wall, and she didn’t know how to get rid of it. How to make it let go. The fact that his mind wasn’t misfiring in exactly the same way as hers made her feel like she was leaving him behind on that bed and she was heading somewhere without him, somewhere strange and new and intense, and even though he was right there beside her, she could feel herself drifting away from him at an alarming speed.

“Of course.”  
“Thank you.”

She already knew he wasn’t seeing it, but when she tore her eyes away from the ceiling and glanced at him, he was staring right up with a serious look on his face, anyway. Staring at nothing. Just for her.  
“Thank you,” she said, and as she said the words, she realized she’d just said them not even twenty seconds ago, but he didn’t laugh or poke fun, he just gave her a lazy smile before focusing his attention to the crack in the ceiling again.

“I don’t see it, but I know what you mean,” he murmured. “Things starting to wave if you look at them long enough. Right?”  
“Yeah,” she said. Belle realized that that was exactly what it was like, having looked away from that confounding ceiling to survey the room. The pattern in the wallpaper was anything but static, and the soft flowery pastel patterns shifted, bulged and shrank and then went back to their original positions over and over again. It wasn’t that dramatic, but it just wasn’t right.  
“I’m not sure if I like it.”

And then his hand sought out her own, and he held it so that she knew he was still there with her, and that wherever she drifted to, he would drift along. Every once in a while she had to squeeze his hand to make sure he was still there, because she would just simply stop feeling _anything_ and it was like a little wave of terror each and every time, but then he would squeeze back and she came back to the world. Her mouth was dry, but still she somehow managed to tell him about that fear and that strange feeling of nothingness, and after that, he started squeezing her hand occasionally on his own, so she wouldn’t have to.

And her limbs might have felt like they were melting into the mattress and making it impossible for her to lift even a single finger, and her mind might have been racing and then slowing and speeding up again, going round and round in circles while the room around her refused to settle down and stop being so vaguely liquid, but he was always her reality. Constant and stable. Soothing her and asking her how she felt. Reminding her over and over again that everything was alright, and that everything she felt was temporary, no matter how permanent it felt.

And she was so glad he’d said that, because it felt like ages of this. Ages of staring at things, laughing for no reason, panicking and reaching for his hand or his face to ground her, carefully walking around the room to stretch her legs, then being startled by the contrast of the bright city lights against the darkness of the sky outside the window and stumbling back into bed. More than a few times, she tried to screw her eyes shut and force herself to sleep, but sleep didn’t come until the sun had set completely and the only light in the room came from the lamp on Gold’s side of the bed, where he had spent all that time sitting, sometimes lounging, always watching her, talking to her and making sure her mind didn’t stray too far.

He never once let her sink into the depths of the unknown.

“I wanna sleep,” Belle whispered. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard at first, but then he was helping her get under the sheets, kissing her forehead, her cheek. He went away for a moment but he came back to put a glass of water to her lips. He brushed her hair away from her eyes and let her draw him down into an embrace. He sank down into her arms with a soft sigh.  
“Can I sleep?” she murmured in his ear. “I don’t know if I can. I tried to before but it didn’t work and I’m so tired.”  
“Sure you can, sweetheart. Just give it another try. And if you can’t, I’ll be right here. We can talk all night.”

When she closed her eyes that time, it did truly feel like she could fall asleep – her eyelids heavy, a warm pressure in the back of her skull like molten steel, weighing her down into her pillow. As she curled up on her side, she felt his weight shift on the other side of the bed and heard the rustling of the sheets again, and then right as sleep came to take her away, he scooted up close with his chest to her back and his arm draped over her waist. Her thoughts were thick and warm and slippery, but there was something she wanted to say, and it was important that she said it before slumber washed over her and swept her words away. Something she suspected couldn’t have meant much to him at all, but in some strange way encompassed every little thing she felt, and every little thing she wanted him to know. His arm tightened around her waist. He kissed her shoulder.

She didn’t get any further than a softly murmured, “You...”

But perhaps that was the heart of the matter.


	4. Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next city and the next hotel room. It becomes clear that neither Belle nor Professor Gold really know how to plan a trip. What starts with a less than stellar mood on Gold's part ends on an entirely different note, thanks to Belle and also a rather peculiar view from the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading this silly thing and being so kind in your comments.

His ankle ached and he had gotten them lost and exhausted, and now he was smoking because the alternative was finding some way to split himself in two so he could punch his moody self squarely in the face. Well, half of it, he supposed. Belle was very quiet, curled up in a chair next to the bed with her nose in a book, and no matter how long he stared, she didn’t once look annoyed or disappointed, and it was well and truly fucking with his head.

They had made it to the hotel, but that was just about the only thing he had gotten right. All of the restaurants that looked any good from the outside were fully booked, and even their last resort of buying some ready made salads or something similar was out of the question when it turned out that it was past closing time. So dinner was the snacks they’d bought the day before, and when he apologized, she gave him this strange look he didn’t understand at all and told him it was fine, she hadn’t been that hungry and she quite liked the calm of their hotel room.

Which was just impossible, wasn’t it? Even as she sat there without a single hint of a bad mood, he couldn’t believe she wasn’t annoyed with him. _He_ was annoyed with him, for fuck’s sake. He lit cigarette number two and inhaled sharp and deep, and that’s when she looked up from her book to catch him staring at her.

“Are you alright?” she asked.  
“Are you?”  
She smiled and chimed, “Yeah! But I asked you first. You alright?”  
“Doesn’t matter.”

He turned to blow smoke out of the window and up towards the evening sky, but then the distinct sound of a book being slammed shut startled him and made him drop his cigarette to the ground below. With a sharp, “Fuck,” he leaned out of the window to make sure he hadn’t just set fire to some poor unsuspecting Pole’s hair. He saw the end glow bright before rolling off the sidewalk and into the gutter, and he sighed in relief. Well, he was one cigarette down, but at least he hadn’t set fire to a local. Good.

Belle very rarely slammed a book shut. Maybe refusing to answer her question had pushed her over the edge and she could no longer pretend she wasn’t bothered by his pitiful displays of ineptitude. That, like seeing his cigarette land nowhere near a flammable head of hair, was a relief, too, in a sense. Her good mood after he’d fucked everything up was too eerie to be comfortable. Anger – that was something he was all too familiar with. Something he could understand. But now that he actually heard her heels thud in a determined stride as she moved towards him, he got a sudden, almost violent chill that ran down his spine. He had changed his mind. He didn’t prefer her anger in the face of his incompetence. He wanted her back in that chair with her pretty nose in that old book with the yellowed pages and the cloth binding fraying at the edges and smiling every two or three pages as if she and the book shared a secret. Why was he being such an idiot?

“It does matter, you know,” said Belle. The softness of her voice surprised him, a stark contrast with the sound of her footsteps just before.

She smoothed her skirt down and sat down next to him on the windowsill. She reached for his cigarettes, took one out, placed it between her lips, took out a second one and held it up to his mouth with her eyebrows raised in expectation. He captured it with his lips and when he looked down to try and find his lighter, he realized that she had beaten him to the punch.

She fiddled with it for a second until finally the flame burst up with a pleasant crackle and painted her face a warm, bright orange. She held it closer to him, and when he leaned in, so did she. With both of them trying to light their cigarettes from the same flame, her face was within that certain distance that instantly turned his mind to kissing her. But now was not the time for that. Another thing he’d managed to fuck up. Excellent.

“You don’t smoke,” he said. There came no reply.

When he finally gathered his courage and looked up, she was peering at him with a curious look on her face. Her cheeks didn’t hollow much when she inhaled (too bubbly and perfect), but her lips rounded more than his did when she blew out the smoke. He loved to stare at her like that, but she shouldn’t have been doing this. Neither should he, for that matter, but it felt like he had dragged her down to his level somehow. God, if Belle knew what he was thinking, she’d tell him off, and rightly so. Like she wasn’t a grown woman who could make her own choices. Apparently she was inside his head somehow, a voice of reason that every once in a while prevented him from saying something he really shouldn’t. It had probably saved them a lot of time arguing.

“Are you going to answer my question?”  
“I’m alright, love.”  
“If you don’t want to talk, that’s okay,” she continued, ignoring his poor attempt at reassurance, “because we don’t have to. But don’t tell me you’re fine if you’re not. Just don’t lie.”

His stubbornness deflated like a week-old balloon finally snaps with very little ado, shriveling and leaving him disarmed under her insistent gaze. He’d just wanted to spare her his mood, that was all, but then he really should have accounted for the way Belle had this knack for seeing right through him. Half-heartedly lying to this woman was the equivalent of showing up to a police line-up with a fake mustache for a disguise – futile, naïve, and quite frankly a laughable waste of everyone’s time.

“You don’t _have_ to lie,” she added, as if the kindness in her eyes wasn’t far more than he deserved already. “Not to me.”

Why did she think he was even worth the bother? Oh, and that was another thought he would have to make sure never to say out loud with her in the same room – she’d have a field day with that one. With a deep sigh, Gold ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it back from his face for a moment only to let it fall in front of his eyes when he tilted his head down. Hiding like a scolded child.

“I’m just annoyed with myself for ruining the day, that’s all.”

He peeked up and she had cocked her head like a confused kitten and if she’d mewled like one, too, he wouldn’t have been in the least bit shocked. Strangely, now he had this urge to reach over and scratch behind her ear. Maybe she’d rub up against him, cuddle up in his lap and they could forget about this awful day. But that was impossible now, and it was his own damn fault.

“Ruining the day? What are you talking about?”  
“We didn’t have dinner. We spent hours walking around town because I kept getting us lost and now I can’t stop myself from projecting my own godawful mood on you. Isn’t that enough?”

The way she looked at him then, the way her smile twitched a little bit, like her mouth was forming words she didn’t quite know how to put in the right order and she had to press her smiling lips together to stop them from escaping, how her eyes were bright and full of compassion – it sort of hurt. A dull ache in his heart. Because how could he ever repay her for that? What could she possibly be getting in return? No matter what he did or said, she just wouldn’t reflect his own negativity back at him. His nonsense just bounced right off her and clattered to the floor to lie there, defanged and declawed. He was nothing but a black hole for her positivity to pour into and disappear forever. Was this what he brought to the table in this rela- in this... Fuck. This was not the time.

“So this is a perspective issue,” mused Belle.  
“What?”  
“We have different perspectives. On how our day went, I mean.”  
“Well yours _is_ lower to the ground,” he muttered under his breath, knowing fully well that his grumpy short-arse self had very little room to speak, but nevertheless unable to stop himself from kicking the ball in when she’d left the goal wide open like that. To his relief, he’d made her giggle. She shook her head and poked him in the chest. Gently, of course, but he let her push him back, cringed and faked a hiss of pain because that too, usually made her laugh. No laugh this time, but she smiled anyway, and he sighed and straightened his back again.  
“I had fun,” she explained. “This place is colorful and gorgeous and we saw every little bit of it. Not that we meant to, but to be honest, we didn’t really plan this whole thing all that well, did we?”  
“Food is pretty essential, though, sweetheart, and I fucked that one up.”  
“I really don’t care. That wasn’t your fault, either. We saw the sights and I had some time to read just now, and that was more than enough for me. Most importantly,” she said, leaning a little bit closer, her forgotten cigarette smoking away into nothingness as she held it between her fingers, “I had you there with me.”  
“Belle...”

He didn’t quite know what to say. An apology was in order, maybe? Would she like to hear that? Probably not, right? She just wanted him to stop feeling sorry for himself, and stop assuming he’d ruined her day when she’d given him no good reason to think so. It sounded perfectly reasonable now that he was no longer too stuck in the mire of his own self-centered moodiness to really give it some thought.

His little saint with the endless reserve of patience and kindness stubbed out what was left of her cigarette and scooted as close to him on the windowsill as she could. With their upper bodies twisted to face each other and her right knee making contact with his left, she reached out to lightly touch his face with soft, cool fingertips. He stared into the vibrant blue of her and hoped she could read the words he knew he shouldn’t say. The apologies she didn’t want him to make.

His cigarette just sort of fell from his hand and down to the gutter below when she placed two fingers under his chin and drew him closer. How he loved it when her gaze fluttered to his lips when she thought of kissing him. He loved her mouth, too. How soft her lips were. She guided him closer slowly, carefully, as if she thought he was fragile somehow, and if she didn’t kiss him soon so he could close his eyes against her blinding brightness, he actually just might fall apart and break into thousands of porcelain pieces in her outstretched hand after all.

She kissed him as soft as a feather and then pulled back a little bit. He didn’t open his eyes. It was too soon. He could only lean in for more, and she gave him what he wanted – just like that, as if he deserved it – and it was just as soft and gentle. Her fingers slid through his hair now, hypnotizing him and melting him down until the agitation and the day’s disappointments were nowhere to be found.

He felt her hands move from his hair to his shoulders and when she broke the kiss, that’s where they stayed. He opened his eyes so he could look at her beautiful mouth again, because he wasn’t quite through admiring it and thinking about how pleasing it was to make her smile. How expressive she was. In the same way some people use their hands to bring their point across, Belle used her entire face to express herself with such enthusiasm that it was almost comical sometimes. Above all, it was absolutely adorable how her eyes got so wide and her mouth twisted into shapes he never knew were physically possible (perhaps the accent had something to do with that too) when she talked about something she loved. She didn’t think twice if she had to look a little goofy in order to translate her vibrant inner world of light and warmth for those around her. Neither did she ever bother with masks or personas, and it was exactly that kind of honesty that had caught Gold off guard. Her openness was what set her apart from anyone he’d ever met. That, and her bravery.

Her hands squeezed his shoulders as if she’d noticed him sinking further away in his thoughts and wanted to bring him back to her, but the feeling only made the memory flood his mind with a sudden warm wave of images and sounds.

It was years ago when she’d first started sneaking into his dull, colorless little world, back when she was still just this nameless diminutive figure with the remarkable eyes and the accent that made his seem tame in comparison who had planted herself in a first row seat all on her own, raising her hand and answering his questions when no-one else was willing. One day, there came a curious little moment where, instead of filing out with the rest of her classmates, she dawdled for a bit until everyone else had left and he was just about done clearing away his things and walked up to him, heels click-clicking his way. Looking just a wee bit nervous, she told him she was enjoying his class, and he’d simply laughed at that, because not once had a student approached him with anything other than a terrible excuse for why they’d missed a deadline, and this just sounded _absurd_ to his ears. It was a surprised sort of laughter; a short burst of mirth until he caught himself and folded his face back into a neutral expression. “Isn’t it a little early in the semester to resort to flattery? You’re not even failing the class, yet,” he’d said. And then, in a moment that was even more surreal, she’d smiled at him with the strangest look in her eyes and not a single trace of that earlier trepidation and said, “And I won’t be.” He simply had to ask for her name, then. You know. To be extra smug if he had to fail her. Not because he was intrigued. Not at all.

“Look!” came her voice like a siren call through the thick mist of memory that had formed in his mind, snapping him back into the room. Belle jumped up from the windowsill, turned and hung out of the window so far his stomach flipped and he felt the strongest urge to pull her back and keep her safe. Curious, though, he turned his head, and what he saw there made his jaw drop as low as hers.

He slipped off the windowsill to stand and lean out of the window as Belle was, and simply marveled. Light. Warm, orange light up ahead, like a thick, undulating swarm of sleepy fireflies, but bigger and slower and growing ever more numerous, flooding the dark night sky in the distance. It was mesmerizing. 

“Lanterns,” she whispered. Oh. Yes. Lanterns, that’s what it was. Thousands of them, it seemed.

Belle was the kind of person who not only saw the forest _and_ the trees; she saw each and every individual leaf, and she could probably tell you where a squirrel had stashed its acorns, too, so of course she saw lanterns where he saw a mass of light. He saw it too, now. She had a curious way of making him see, and he made a note there and then never to joke about her eyesight when she called him handsome ever again. The lanterns came from a spot behind the city skyline; a steady stream that showed no signs of slowing, and it was truly beautiful, but so was Belle’s look of childlike awe as she stared with her lips parted and her eyes as wide as could be.

“What’s that about, you reckon?” she asked him, gently bumping her shoulder into him as if she could tell he’d gotten lost again.  
“No clue. We really didn’t do our research, did we?”  
“We’re the worst tourists.”  
“Do you want to try and head over there?”

His ankle was still being a nightmare, but if Belle wanted to go see the lights, he’d piggy-back her there if he had to, no hesitation. She shook her head and inched her hand closer to his on the windowsill until her little finger touched his thumb. The sweetness of that gesture damn near brought him to his knees.

“It’s perfect, here.”  
It was.

More and more lanterns flew up and joined the glowing cloud. Thousands of them. Their fingers stayed lightly touching on the windowsill.

“Very Disney, isn’t it?” he said, flashing her a wry smile.  
“Careful, now, handsome,” she replied, bumping her shoulder into him again. “That’s just begging me to start referring to you as my prince.”  
“I think not. More like the B-”  
“Don’t you dare!” she cried, spinning around to face him and fitting her small hand over his mouth, muffling his laughter. To lick or not to lick? On the one hand, he was far too old for those playground tactics. On the other hand, it would make her laugh. He did love to make her laugh. So he licked the palm of her hand, and she yelped, and when she giggled exactly the way he thought she would, his heart beat a little faster and his smug grin grew much wider. She wiped her hand on his shirt, shaking her head and trying not to smirk (and failing), and he grinned.  
“You have to admit, though-”  
“You’re not going there, Gold,” she said with her jaw clenched, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head. She was trying to frown and it was absolutely adorable. God, he loved to tease her.  
“Ah, but the name!” he continued, egged on by her tragic attempt at a stern look. “And the books! And the spontaneous musical numbers wherever you-”  
“No more!” she laughed, the feigned angry look on her face dissipating completely.

Her next tactic for shutting him up was a lot more effective.

Because her arms flew around his neck and she pressed her open mouth against his, capturing his bottom lip in that way she liked to do, and it was one of those kisses that made his head spin and his heart thud faster, spreading a heat in his chest and a coiling a tightness in his belly, and all of the sudden he was sixteen again; not a tired bone in his body and not a care in the world. The lanterns outside were pretty, alright, but with his arms full of the most precious thing in the world, they simply faded from existence like everything else that wasn’t her. This kiss was nothing like the sweet feathery touch of her lips when she was putting him back together again; this was for her, not for him, and somehow that made it so much better. Her arms were so tight around him he thought he would burst. When she was on him like this, urgent and needy, he couldn’t even begin to doubt her hunger for him. Her affection like thousands of lanterns in a pitch black sky. Impossible to miss.

She broke the kiss to give him the look; her gaze flitting between his lips and his eyes, her cheeks stained a lovely red, her mouth slightly parted. His sweet, gorgeous, hypersensual little open book. She was transparent so her light could flood the room and find him hiding in his shadows. How could he not love her?

He loved her.

Bloody hell. He’d fallen in love with her.

The truth flooded his system and made him feel fearless and alive, and as he followed her to the bed and crawled after her, slowly kissing his way up her thighs and letting her fingers tangle with his hair and _pull_ , he knew that this was it. It was her. She was what his entire life had been leading up to. It was Belle French.

And he was in love with her.


	5. Moderation II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, champagne. Lots of it. Belle and Professor Gold find out who can handle their drink best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all. so. damn. lovely. Thank you for everything. Comments, views, kudos - everything. <3

At the farm winery, Gold looked especially handsome with his sunglasses and with his sleeves rolled up. They’d driven there in their tiny rental car because Mme de La Tour, the lovely old woman and proprietor of the bed and breakfast at which they were staying, had insisted they go and have a picnic there. At least, that’s what Belle thought she’d said, because her French wasn’t actually that stellar, but Gold seemed to have understood the same thing. The woman had told them to wait, disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later with a plastic bag. She gave Belle a toothy grin and a small piece of paper with some directions scribbled on it, pressed the bag into Gold’s arms and told them _au revoir_.

Belle was so glad she'd insisted they stay at a place away from the center of town.

Gold had long since given up trying to book them into the most expensive hotels against Belle’s wishes like he said he would, because over the course of this trip, it had become abundantly clear that the big bad grumpy professor was, in fact, a pussycat – at least where Belle was concerned. Oh, he never submitted without a bit of a grumble, of course, which is why it was a little odd that this time, he hadn’t even so much as rolled his eyes when she suggested they rent a car and stay in a bed and breakfast in the country rather than in the center of town. This place, this big old house with the stone exterior and the flowering garden, surrounded by fields and vineyards and winding roads lined with decrepit wooden fences and untrimmed hedges, it was more beautiful than the comforts of a four star hotel were tempting. Perhaps that was why he didn’t even pretend to want to put up a fight.

Unless there was something else. Belle could sense that perhaps there was, and it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, she didn’t think, but it was a little curious nonetheless. They would be walking around town admiring the 16th century half-timbered houses or resting in the shadow of the cathedral, talking and laughing and teasing just a little bit – just their usual play fights, really – but then every once in a while he would fall silent and neglect to return a blow. Like she’d knocked the sword out of his hand and he was too tired to pick it up. He gazed at her then, with this strange look on his face of utter and complete unconditional surrender, and then he’d look away flashing a faint smile that wasn’t very difficult to construe as being just a little bit shy.

Seriously. Shy. After everything.

It was cute, of course, but somehow it felt like a step backwards. Had she spooked him? Talked about baby names or something? No, no, it couldn’t have been anything like that because he wasn’t pulling away from her. The way he looked at her at night when all their words had gone and they were all alone was no different. More intense, if anything. He still touched her exactly the same, kissed her with just as much fire, still wouldn’t let up until she’d come so many times her head reeled and he practically had to tuck her in because she could barely move her tired limbs – so no, they were fine. (That may have been the one disadvantage of Belle’s choice of lodgings, actually; the walls weren’t very soundproof and the bed was creaky, but they managed to work around that problem by dragging the duvet off the bed and relocating to the floor. That didn’t exactly take care of _all_ of the noise, but that’s what his hand over her mouth was for.)

Well. She’d gotten a bit lost in her thoughts, there, but the sound of Gold’s voice brought her back to their little spot in the vineyard as he untied the knot on the plastic carrier bag, peeked inside, chuckled and said, “That woman is a saint.”  
“Oh?”  
“Look at this.”

He fished out a small box of strawberries, half of one baguette, a small wooden box of Camembert cheese, two paper plates, two plastic cups and a plastic knife and lined them all up on the wooden picnic table. Belle’s eyes had widened with each and every item Gold took out of the bag, her smile growing ever bigger, too.

“What are the cups for?”  
“Ah, well,” he said, nodding towards the farmhouse just visible between the trees, “for the champagne, of course.”  
“Oh! They make and sell it?”  
“I should think so,” he muttered, pushing himself up from the table and brushing off the dirt (not that there was any) from his jeans. “Stay here and get started on those strawberries. I’ll go and have a look.”

She watched him head towards the house, his limp not very noticeable but present nonetheless. Belle had learned not ask about the pain until at the end of the day, when she could wrap her arms around his ankle to warm it, find him some ibuprofen or roll them a joint if that was at all possible (but that hadn’t been an option since their stop in Amsterdam) and maybe distract him using other tactics. When they were out and about like this, however, Gold was set on being this stoic figure of a prideful, injured lion and she had picked up on that need of his to mask his pain very early on.

So she didn’t tell him to sit down and let her go and have a look instead. She never suggested they head back to their room unless _she_ was tired and sore. The only thing she did do on occasion, when the day drew to a close and they were still meandering through town, was sidle up to him and wrap herself around his arm. Sometimes – and it made her so happy whenever he did – he would lean into her, shift just a little bit of his weight to her, and then they silently agreed to go back to their room. His dignity was more important to him than his comfort, and even though she didn’t agree with his priorities, she respected them, so Belle would faithfully defend the former during the day, and take care of the latter with a fierce sense of devotion at night.

It was such a gorgeous summer day, though. The wind was blowing just enough to stop the heat from becoming uncomfortable, and there were only a few big fluffy clouds floating overhead in the bright blue sky. All around her was the sound of rustling leaves and the occasional bird making itself known with a song she hadn’t heard before. It didn’t take very long for him to come back with a small bottle of champagne in his hand and a tentative smile on his face.

They sat and ate and drank in the sunshine. They talked, but mostly about the cheese and that old lady’s incredible kindness. They joked about whether she’d heard them go at it on the floor late at night, and in between there was silence. It was in no way uncomfortable, but it gave Belle too many chances to think about things it was probably best not to think about. About how easily they could have disappeared from each other’s lives without so much as a goodbye, for instance.

Which is why she sighed, gave him a thoughtful smile and said, “I’m so glad you busted me that day. On the roof.”  
He looked a little bit as if she’d surprised him with the sudden change of subject (they’d been debating whether or not it was ironic for someone to have little command of the French language while actually being called ‘French’) but he quickly returned her smile and replied, “As am I. If it had been the dean, she would have had you hanged, drawn and quartered.”  
“True,” she laughed, “and that would have been a bit of a downer, to say the least, but that’s not what I meant.”  
“Oh?”  
“It’s just crazy to think we’re here today because you had the urge to smoke just as I was up on that roof. Isn’t it?”  
He looked thoughtful, eyebrows knitted together, tongue flicking over his lips.  
“Yeah. I suppose it is.”  
“Do you reckon we’d have gotten together some other way, if that day hadn’t gone the way it had?”

Oh dear, there was that shyness again. His hair in front of his eyes, his head tilted forward. God, what was up with them lately? She kept accidentally dragging the mood down somehow, and she wasn’t even entirely sure how she was doing it.

“Never mind,” she added quickly, “it’s a silly thought.”

She reached for a strawberry, but he caught her hand in his own before she could. He didn’t say anything, but he gave her that by now strangely familiar shy smile, and she felt her racing heart slow to its normal pace. He looked down at her hand and rubbed his thumb against her palm in soothing circles. What was he thinking? What was he _feeling_? Why was she so certain that his sudden bouts of silence weren’t necessarily a bad sign?

He’d retreat in one way but only to reach out in another, in what felt like a conscious effort to keep her near. It was as if he’d run out of words, and that simple but hypnotic touch was all he could think to do in order to show her he was still there with her. She reached over and put her hand on top of his, capturing it. He looked up and flashed her a faintly apologetic smile, and she mirrored it right back at him. When she did that, she noticed the tension fade from his worried brow, and she knew that she was right about him. They were alright.

He needed time, that was all. He’d tell her eventually. Tell her what, though? God, it hardly mattered. They were together, and they were happy, and what they needed was to relax and stop thinking about what was happening in the confines of their own minds – and that was something Belle was guilty of, too. Because she kept thinking about what would have happened had she not offered him that joint, or what would have happened if either one of them had made a move when they really shouldn’t have. None of that mattered anymore. They needed to have a little fun.

“Hey, handsome,” she said, voice low and secretive. He looked up with his brow furrowed, and he looked so cartoonishly confused it was all Belle could do not to start giggling.  
“How long has it been since you got completely, ridiculously, irresponsibly drunk?”  
“Why?” he asked, with the most adorable puzzled look Belle had ever seen. It only served to strengthen her resolve.  
“Because I want to get really drunk tonight and sleep in tomorrow. It’ll be fun.”  
“That’s really what you want to do?”  
“Are you kidding me? Absolutely! If you’re up for it, that is.”

His confused smile slowly grew into a smirk, his eyes narrowing. No matter how many times Belle was at the receiving end of that look, she could never quite stop it from _getting_ to her. The change of mood came over him fast and all at once because she’d kicked his dropped sword back at him and he was picking himself up from the floor, ready to charge and trade playful blows once more.

“Oh, darling,” he almost growled, a hint of laughter in his voice, “did you really think I would ever pass up a chance to see you plastered?”  
“Careful,” she teased. “I may be small, but I can handle my drink. Don’t try and keep up.”

How wonderful it was to see his Cheshire cat grin again. Predatory, almost, but just a little too playful to really turn Belle’s mind to anything very naughty. A night of irresponsible, indefensible stupidity was just what they needed. That’s how they started this whole thing, after all. More or less.

They gathered their things in the plastic bag and headed towards the farm house, hand in hand. Once inside, Belle let him do the picking, because she truly had no idea how one bottle of wine or champagne could be better than the other, but she trusted his judgement. Maybe he could teach her one day. (That is, if he hadn’t just automatically picked the most expensive bottles just because he could, or perhaps out of spite for not being allowed to book them into the most expensive luxury hotels and buy their way into the fanciest restaurants without reservations.)

They carried more bottles to the car than they planned on drinking just to be safe, plus one for the nice old lady who had made their day. With the windows down and the radio blasting and their grins seemingly permanent on their sun-kissed faces, they drove down winding country roads back to the old white house.

Their host was delighted with the bottle they’d brought back for her and wouldn’t let them go back to their room without two of her best champagne glasses. Belle had never actually heard Gold thank anyone but her (and even that was rare), but in less than a minute in conversation with Mme de La Tour, she’d heard him thank her about a dozen times, in French and in English, and she had to try very hard not to giggle when she imagined how his students would react to seeing him this pleasant, this open, this _happy_. They would see two different men where Belle saw one – just one.

They started drinking when the sun began to set, seated at the little plastic table on the balcony with his cigarettes nearby. Belle had found some candles in the nightstand and they looked gorgeous flickering in the soft summer breeze. The first cork of the evening went flying into the garden with a loud _pop_ , which was just a little bit terrifying, because Belle could have sworn Mme de La Tour had been watering the roses down there, but when she leaned over the balcony to check, she was nowhere to be found, and she sighed a sigh of relief.

“A cork to the head wouldn’t knock that lady out,” he muttered, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.  
“Yeah, you’re right,” she agreed as she sat back down next to him, “nor the bottle, I bet.”

He laughed and handed her her glass, and when their fingers touched for the umpteenth time that day, Belle smiled to herself, because wasn’t it lovely that no matter how often they touched and no matter how intimate they’d been with one another, her body and her mind still registered his touch as something important each and every time – whether it was a conscious touch with a purpose, or an accidental brush of the fingers? It was still new, still special and worth noticing. She doubted the feel of his skin against hers would ever stop sparking a little light in her mind and setting her synapses firing.

They went through that first bottle pretty quickly and it fueled their playful conversation to the point where Belle could feel her face start to ache from smiling so much. He laughed at her attempts at a French uvular trill which, no matter how many times she tried, kept sounding like a hopelessly rusty engine sputtering and failing. In return, Belle threatened to mimic his accent, and he was quick to apologize, and even though he couldn’t wipe the smug smirk from his face, Belle decided to give him a break and keep that particular threat for a rainy day since it seemed so very effective.

Oh, but that didn’t mean she was done poking and prodding at him, though.

At one point in the conversation, he’d lit a cigarette and before he could take a second drag, Belle had reached over the table and snatched it away. She giggled at his theatrical look of shock and inhaled, trying not to cough. She still didn’t much like the idea of smoking, and she wasn’t planning on making a habit of it, but with that bubbly champagne haze turning everything a little bit soft-focus, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to have a little fun teasing him

“Belle, sweetheart, if you’re going to smoke, won’t you at least take a cigarette from the pack instead of swiping mine right out of my mouth like some sort of nicotine thief?”  
She limited her response to a simple, resounding, “No,” and then blew out a mouthful of smoke, never once breaking eye contact.

Belle smirked and quirked an eyebrow as if challenging him to _make_ her, and when there came no reply except for a contained little smile, she kindly moved his cigarette back to his mouth, tapped the filter against his lips until he parted them obediently, placed it in between, then brushed her fingertips against his cheek softly before sitting back again.

“I like sharing with you,” she explained with a shrug and a cheeky grin.  
“I’ll take your word for it if you insist you’re getting something out of it, but I don’t get it.”  
“No? God, it’s difficult to explain, but... It’s intimate, I guess.”  
“Intimate?”  
“Yeah! I mean, maybe it’s that I’m a bit orally fixated, too, but-” Gold’s loud laugh interrupted her, but she bit down on her grin and carried on. “It makes me feel close to you.”

The slight mocking edge to his grin softened and left him gazing at her in a silent moment of understanding, beautiful dark eyes brimming with unspoken words. From over the rim of her glass she watched him stare openly, his smile a small, precious thing that she wasn’t actually sure he was aware of. She felt her stomach flutter in the spotlight of that stare, unfiltered and so meaningful somehow. Did he get it, now? Did he understand how much he meant to her? What he made her feel?

Suddenly, as Belle’s heart was beating loudly in her ears, time thawed and began to flow again. Gold blinked, put on that playful grin of his again and set his own glass to his lips. The moment was gone, and in its place was that sense of mischief of before – so bubbly and fun she didn’t really mind at all.

“Alright, then.”  
“Alright?”  
“We’ll share.”

 _We’ll share._ Why did that sound so beautiful? Belle promptly stood up, crossed the distance between them and dropped herself into his lap with her arm draped over his shoulder. She kissed his hair and sank into his embrace with a soft, contented sigh. His laughter near her ear ran a shiver down her spine and gave her goosebumps. 

“I didn’t think that deal included my chair.”  
“You thought wrong,” she murmured, nuzzling her nose into his soft, soft hair.  
“Before you ask,” he replied, placing his hand on her bare knee and giving it a gentle squeeze, “I’m not complaining.”  
“Didn’t think you were.”

God, the effect he had on her. She’d tell him, one day. All of it. What his voice did to her, how he could reduce her to a simmering heap of _want_ with a single dark look, how she loved it when she could smell him on her clothes. She didn’t care if that embarrassed him. It was simply unfair that she had to shoulder these intense feelings all by herself, knowing that if she were to share them with him, he would scoff and blush and stammer and pretend she was out of her mind – all because he’d been too self-deprecating for too long and he didn’t know how to take a bloody compliment anymore. So yes, one day. One day she’d tell him. But for now, all she could do was touch.

He was the one to initiate the kiss, with his hand holding her chin, tilting and angling her head down. Their mouths hot and wet and open, their hands roaming free; it wasn’t very elegant, nor was it really leading anywhere, but it was fun and light, and it made her feel alive. They were just two people wrapped up in one another, drunk on expensive champagne, who, on occasion, smoked for absolutely no good reason whatsoever (neither of them addicted, both of them just bored), and in that moment it felt like anything and everything that wasn’t on that balcony was completely insignificant. She felt as if they were immortal. Timeless. Even the taste of cigarettes on his bold tongue was perfect in that narrative of careless self-indulgence. Everything she felt and every thought that made it out of the maze of her muddled consciousness was absolutely ridiculous and utterly clichéd, but that didn’t matter. Who cared? They were perfect together.

God, look at her. Making out with her former professor in France. Would it be cheating if she retroactively put that on a bucket list and crossed it off?

They sat there engrossed in one another, kissing and swilling champagne until the second bottle was nearly empty, and Belle was well and truly drunk. The champagne was making her more than a little giggly, but Gold didn’t seem unaffected, either. He had an endearing blush on his cheeks, and his laughter came easier with his guard down like that. She played with his hair, twisted it around her fingers and combed through it, and the way he gradually leaned into the touch more and more made her heart melt into a pool of glowing warmth. A couple of glasses earlier, Belle had been draped over him by choice, but with that second bottle nearly gone, it was more of a necessity. Her bones and muscles had become strangely unreliable.

“Full moon,” she said, a little too far gone to really put much effort into forming a decent sentence when a couple of words and some meaningful intonation would suffice. It was the first time she’d looked away from him in some time, but good God, it was a beautiful night. Crickets and starlight, the moon shining down benevolently up above, the smell of roses on the gentle, warm breeze. She was drunk, so drunk, but oh – she didn’t want to leave. Not ever. Well, no, they’d have to leave at some point. But just not the day after tomorrow, like they’d planned. That was much too soon.

“We could stay here forever,” Belle sighed.  
“With Mme de La Tour,” he agreed.  
“I love that garden. And our room, too. We’d go and get us some champagne at the farm. Spend our summer nights here on the balcony or in the grass.”  
“In the winter we could help her chop firewood.”  
“There’s central heating though.”

Gold scrunched up his face in confusion or disbelief, Belle wasn’t quite sure, but then he said, “Really?” and she giggled and nodded.  
“Yeah.”  
“Decorative firewood, then.”

Belle felt his fingers at the back of her head, combing through her hair, digging through to softly scratch at the back of her neck, and she melted into the touch.  
“Do some gardening,” she continued. “Grow our own weed. Do you think she’d mind?”  
“I bet she could outsmoke us both.”  
“And I think her hearing’s going so eventually we wouldn’t have to be quiet when we have sex. We’re awful at that.”  
“Excuse me, _I_ can keep quiet. _You_ are a fucking fire alarm.”  
“You’re lucky we’re too drunk for me to really consider that a challenge.”  
He laughed and hugged her tight to his chest. “Yeah. Better not tonight.”

They were very, very, very drunk indeed, and Belle knew if she drank another drop, the world would start spinning and the night would take a turn for the worse, so she watched him finish off his glass and then pushed the bottle out of their reach.

“Does that mean I win?” Gold murmured into her ear, slurring just a little bit.  
“We’ll see in the morning.”

…

And in the pale morning light, Belle saw, alright. She’d won. Gold was absolutely ruined, his gorgeous hair mussed up and fluffy like a baby owl had perched on the top of his head. She wanted to reach over from her side of the bed and mess it up even more.  
“Aw, poor baby,” she cooed with more than a little hint of laughter in her voice. He grumbled an unintelligible response and screwed his eyes tightly shut.  
“Does your head hurt? Would you like me to close the curtains?”  
“No, no. Light’s good.”  
“Are you sure?”

Cause that’s not what it looked like, with his face buried in his pillow and his arms now folded over his head. It wasn’t as if Belle didn’t have a bit of a dull, aching head herself, but Gold looked as if he was in a truly pitiful state of agony. She was just about to get up and close the curtains after all, but then he looked up – just his dark eyes with a hint of laughter peeking up from behind his arm. 

“You’re not getting out of bed, are you?” he murmured.  
“Not just yet.”  
“Good,” he said, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

And it was there in that room, lying in his arms while he squinted against the sun when it emerged from behind a solitary passing cloud that Belle realized she loved him. Oh, it wasn’t exactly news to her, true; there had been moments where they were so happy, so excited and wrapped up in one another that the truth surfaced for a moment to glitter in the sun, making her want to grab him by the shoulders and shout, “I’m in love with you!” before another wave of distraction came and pushed the impulse down again. She’d loved him for a while. She knew that. But it was so strong, now, in the quiet of their room. So certain and clear, loud and strong. No frills or baubles or distractions.

Deep inside, in her belly, heavy and yet fluttering, warm and bright like she’d swallowed a lightbulb or something equally impossible, her love for him glowed. It itched just a little bit, and she could feel that sensation beginning to take form, shaping itself into words; felt them rise up in her throat to burn against the roof of her mouth until she forced them down again.

Belle never hid. She was terrible at pretending. And it was very tempting indeed to profess her love for this man in between urgent kisses, there in the north of France, in that garden full of roses or even right here in this creaky bed while the birds in the trees chirped their morning songs and the sun cast a pool of light on their naked bodies underneath a single white sheet, but there was some part of her that knew that if she was going to take the plunge and throw her heart at his feet, she would have to do it at home. Wherever that was. Where they could pick up the pieces if it all went wrong. Not that she really thought this could go wrong. Was she being presumptuous?

Maybe. But she didn’t care. There was not a doubt in her mind that for him, too, this was stronger than mere fondness, more than just physical attraction (intense though that was) and deeper than just the retroactive thrill of falling for someone you really, truly shouldn’t. Maybe that was why he’d had these strange fits of shyness lately. Maybe the words burned in his mouth, too. Too soon. Too strong.

“Belle?” came his voice, pulling her away from her thoughts for a moment.  
“Mm?”  
“You’re very patient.” He had offered her a handful of words. They weren’t _the_ words, but Belle knew. She knew. The fluttery warm thing in her stomach shook and sang as if it resonated with his voice. She couldn’t have stopped herself from smiling even if she’d tried.  
“Just when something’s worthwhile.”

His eyes were shut against the increasingly insistent sun, but he smiled, and it tugged at her heart. She would get up, soon. She’d get him a glass of water and a painkiller, and maybe a wet washcloth to soothe his aching head. Soon. Not just yet. And when she’d put him back together again, after taking his hand and leading him to the shower, she would ask him if they could stay in this place a little while longer. She wanted to sit with him on that balcony and look at the stars and the roses for a few more days. Just to sit and stare at all of this beauty with the man she loved, away from the world, in their own personal paradise.

His hand found hers underneath the sheets and she knew. They were in love.


	6. /ˈtiː.ʃɜːt/

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Professor Gold finds it difficult not to be grumpy when it's very hot out. Belle finds it difficult to get the man to wear a bloody t-shirt, already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit more M than usual. I think.
> 
> Again: thank you all so much for commenting and leaving kudos. Makes me so happy.
> 
> (Note: I apologize for the ancient NZ joke. I just couldn't resist the phonology aspect. Nothing personal, I promise. Had they gone to NZ, I'd have made AUS the butt of the joke.)

To say that Gold didn’t like flying would be an understatement; he absolutely despised it. This flight in particular had been relentlessly grueling, even if he did manage to upgrade their tickets before Belle could make a fuss. He shuddered to think what it would have been like had they not had the leg room. (Not that they needed much of it, admittedly, the pair of them.) Ah, but the fitful sleep and the constant maddening hum of the engines was worth it, though, just to see her face light up the moment they walked out of the airport and into the sun.

The _glaring_ sun, beating down on them and making him want to turn on his heels and march straight back into the airport and onto a plane headed for somewhere permanently snowy. The heat had taken him off guard, because Belle, who, after all, was supposed to know what to expect from a visit to her native country this time of year, had assured him it would be winter and therefore bearable. But this wasn’t bearable. This was hell.

As they stood and waited for a taxi, Gold couldn’t resist muttering, “You said it would be mild,” under his breath. Belle turned and looked at him as if he’d grown a second head and replied, “I said that before we decided to stay in France for another week! It’s spring now, and it’s not like I can predict a heat wave, can I?”  
“Fair point,” he conceded.

Gold had never really fared very well in high temperatures. His thought processes slowed down, his limbs felt ten times heavier and the filter between his brain and his mouth that usually stopped him from complaining about everything and everyone got one hell of a workout. He sighed, wrapped his arm around Belle’s waist and pulled her close. _Fuck_ , it was too hot even for that, but he had to show her he was trying not to be an idiot, somehow. She reached up and undid another button on his shirt, which was rather sweet of her, so he kissed her nose and delighted in her soft giggle and bright, beautiful grin.

He was grateful she had let him book a decent hotel this time, too, because after a flight like that, the thought of being cooped up in some depressing little cell truly made him shiver. And sure, fine, perhaps he didn’t really have to book the most expensive suite, but he was more than willing to let her chide him from the airport all the way up to the hotel, because he knew that when she saw the view from their room, she’d get over it. Belle loved a good view.

The ride to the hotel was mercifully short, and there came exactly zero reprimanding comments about his choice of accommodations, which was a nice little bonus. All she did was point at things and places they passed by and tell him little stories about them, all of them endearing. There was the stop sign she walked into once (“But did the sign survive the encounter?” “Shush!”) and the second hand store where she’d found a whole bunch of cheap early edition H.G. Wells, for instance – all memories from her gap years. But then there was also the candy store that now stood abandoned and derelict where she used to buy more candy than was probably a good idea for an 8-year-old to consume and the park where she ran into a tree because she liked the thrill of running at full speed with her eyes closed (“Let me guess – after a visit to the candy store?”), and he could just picture this tiny blue-eyed girl, braver than most and perhaps a little too rash, running about the place and somehow never getting herself into too much trouble. He smiled and laughed throughout, and the look on her face of sheer joy once again reaffirmed his earlier conclusion; the flight and the heat had been worth it. She shone in this place.

And it turned out he was right about Belle and that view. Gold chuckled softly to himself when she made a beeline straight for the large window and practically pressed herself up against it, gasped and waved for him to come and look. So he walked up and stood next to her, gave the admittedly impressive cityscape a cursory look but then turned his gaze to Belle, who was infinitely more amusing to watch with her wide eyes soaking up the sight and her mouth open in awe.

“This view is incredible!” she cried.  
“Like it?”  
“I love it!”

Those moments where her hand sought out his made his heart sing, and this one was no different. He had been trying to figure out what exactly triggered that particular adorable tactile urge of hers, but he gave up when he realized that it didn’t matter one iota why she did it. What mattered was that his hand was near enough to be grabbed whenever she did, so he’d learned to stop wondering and just enjoy the touch, instead.

When they fell onto the ridiculously huge bed for a short nap before heading out, she fit right under his chin and her breath was hot against his chest, slowing along with his until they both fell asleep. When he woke, he sneaked out from underneath her sprawled limbs (not an uncommon position for her to end up in) to take a quick shower. He found her reading when he came back, and while she was in the shower, Gold took the time to try and pick out a shirt that was unlikely to have him boiling in his own skin before sundown, which turned out to be a pretty futile endeavor, because he owned no such thing. He’d have to tough it out.

“Are you okay to head out again?” she asked when she came back from the bathroom in the blue summer dress he loved.  
“Ready to go.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Of course I’m sure!”  
“Because you don’t look like you’re doing too well in this heat.”  
“I’ll be fine.”

She paused, narrowed her eyes and then nodded as if she’d come to a decision.  
“Yeah, as soon as we get you into a t-shirt.”  
“What?”

No, no. Absolutely not. Gold didn’t ‘do’ t-shirts. The only t-shirt he owned at present had been claimed by her ladyship after that first night they spent together as a makeshift nightie, and he was glad to be rid of the thing. (She looked much better in it, anyway.)

“We need to buy you some t-shirts.”  
“No. We don’t.”  
“Why not?” she asked with a particularly suspicious look and her arms folded.  
“I don’t like wearing them.”  
“But why?”  
“I just don’t, sweetheart. It’s no big deal.”

She wasn’t buying it, but she didn’t seem to want to fight him on the matter. At least, not until the elevator doors closed, at which point she turned towards him with her chin tilted up with a definite air of determination.

“Seriously, you’re going to have to explain to me what the bloody problem is,” she demanded.  
“I’m used to long-sleeved button-ups, now. My arms are never exposed. It’d feel too strange.”  
“You roll your sleeves up all the time!”  
“ _Not_ all the way up to the fucking biceps, love.”

Her eyes narrowed again and he regretted the little endearment at the end of that sentence with a sudden chill. He hadn’t meant for it to sound condescending, but oh fuck, did it ever come across that way.

“Is it that you don’t think you look good in them?”  
“I don’t care about that.”  
“Said the man with the closet full of expensive designer suits.”

Ah. Touché.

“Fine, alright. I’m stubborn. I’m used to my things the way they are now and change annoys me because the status quo works for me. But I can handle the heat, Belle, I promise. I’ll roll up my sleeves and I’ll be fine.”

The elevator doors opened and he followed her out and into the lobby.

“If you die of heatstroke, I will find a way to bring you back from the dead and kill you. Again.”  
“Well, if you do manage to find a way to revive me and you haven’t decided how to kill me again, might I suggest shagging me to death? I think you’ve already tried a few times, but you’re welcome to give it another go.”  
“Hilarious,” she mumbled, the deadpan quality to her voice (she’d gotten better at that, and he had to admit he was rather proud) a stark contrast with the laughter in her eyes. “I’m not having my boyfriend hospitalized because he’s too stubborn – or too vain, or whatever the bloody problem is – to wear something appropriate for the weather.”

Boyfriend.

He came to a halt right in front of the hotel, the sun hot on his skin, his mind curiously blank and frantic at the same time.

“Boyfriend?”

Oh God. Not only was there absolutely no fucking reason for him to have repeated that out loud, he had also ever-so-slightly stumbled over the word like a character in some sort of low budget saccharine soap opera, and he was certain Belle had noticed and she was about to see through the cracks in his mask, and he’d have to tell her he loved her thousands of miles away from home where she couldn’t run like the wind when he inevitably scared her off, and then she’d be trapped here with the man who’d fallen in love with his former student and took her traveling for a second fucking date like a fucking lunatic. He’d ruined everything.

But... she looked a little flustered. Her lips were parted and her eyes just a little bit wider, a faint blush on her cheeks, Belle was silent for a beat, then crossed her arms and with a voice that was slightly louder than it normally was, she huffed and said, “Don’t tell me you’re going to start making a fuss about _that_ , too.”

_Boyfriend._

“I wasn’t going to,” he somehow managed, despite the sudden dryness of his mouth and the trouble his tongue seemed to be having with pronouncing every consonant only once. She blinked at him, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips. Had she heard him? He felt like he couldn’t have said that in much more than a bemused murmur. He saw her swallow. She was nervous.  
“Oh,” she said, her voice smaller now, the corners of her mouth twitching up the slightest bit in a grin that made his stomach flutter. “Good. I’ll be having exactly none of your nonsense today, handsome.”

Apparently not.

She knew she’d won. Her gaze was softer, now, and he could tell she was trying not to look too smug in her victory, biting down on her grin like that.  
“It’s not like I’m asking you to burn the button-ups,” she cooed, wrapping herself around his arm and giving him that completely unfair look. “I _like_ your wardrobe. It’s just for now. For as long as it’s this hot out. You can go back to your fancy shirts when it cools off.”  
“Fine,” he sighed deeply. “But if you hand me anything that’s got a print on it, I will buy it just to shove it in a litter bin and set the entire thing on fire.”  
“Rich people are so weird,” she muttered, rolling her eyes and bumping her shoulder into him playfully.

Fuck. He had a girlfriend. At his age. Oh good fucking grief – he could feel one or two self-imposed inhibitions begin to slip already. He’d been trying so hard not to buy her everything she looked at for more than ten seconds, for one. He could buy her more things now, couldn’t he? Or did that privilege not come with the title? She’d protest, that was for sure, but he could probably get away with a few more gifts. Fuck, would he have to meet her father soon? How old was he? They’d never even really talked about him much. He owned some sort of shop, that’s all he knew. Oh, and that his daughter has a boyfriend twice her age who gets her high on occasion. He wouldn’t blame him if he thought it fit to bash his skull in the moment Belle introduced him. For all the poor Australian bastard knew, Belle was off backpacking in Europe with a friend. Was she planning on referring to him as her boyfriend to just everyone, now? Probably – she was pretty obviously affectionate with him in public already. She latched onto his arm every chance she got, played with his hair, held his hand, and kissed him an awful lot. In fact – and this was a rather bemusing realization – he’d probably been kissed more in the span of the last few months than he had been in his entire lifetime, which sounded pathetic, until you considered Belle’s immense fondness for that particular show of affection. She needed no excuse.

See, and _that_ was why he needed the imposing suits and the well-maintained air of indifference. Because there was some part of him that had been buried away for so long until she came along and tapped into it, and he’d spent the past few months trying to look casual on the outside while inwardly he was frantically hauling around sandbags, trying to plug leaks, wishing she’d stop poking holes in the hull of his rusty ship because he felt the water rising to his chin and he didn’t know for how long he could – or should – hold back the words.

Belle grabbed his face, kissed him boldly on the lips, took him by the hand and dragged him away from his mild panicky thoughts and into the nearest shop, only to shove him into a changing booth with a stack of t-shirts of every color _except_ black, and part of him wanted to complain and try to bargain with her for some dark navy or even grey, but another, stronger, livelier part of him that jumped up every time Gold looked at Belle and thought ‘ _girlfriend_ ’ was standing by, ready to strangle the life out of that other part. V-necks. She’d only given him fucking v-necks, but it was too hot to argue, and he was still too stunned to really put up much of a fight.

“See? Much better!” she chimed as they walked out of the shop. And his little tyrant was absolutely right, but he wasn’t about to admit it, so instead he made some sort of noncommittal noise in his throat and made a point of it not to admire her smug grin, tempting though the sight was. He was the one to reach out and grab her hand this time, and they walked around the city until the sight of some hastily scrawled graffiti in an alley to their left stopped him in his tracks.

“What is it?” she asked, an inquisitive look on her face as she came to a standstill right next to him. He took a few steps into the alley, and she followed.  
“I think I may have found some of your early artwork,” he replied, pointing at the brick wall where in large red letters, he read:

_NEW ZEALAND SUCKS  
AUSTRALIA SEVEN_

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she laughed, “I wouldn’t have been able to resist adding the IPA.”  
“Ah, of course,” he replied. From the gleam in her eye, Gold knew that if he just prodded her a little bit, she’d go off on one of her linguaphile outbursts and, well, he rather liked it when she did that. He did feel slightly guilty for zoning out and missing perhaps 50 percent of what she was actually saying because the way she would absolutely light up with enthusiasm was so endearing it was awfully distracting, but she hadn’t noticed before, so really, what harm could it do?

With a contained smile and a nod towards the words on the wall, Gold asked her, “I take it New Zealanders centralized that vowel? ‘Six’ to ‘sucks’?”  
“Near-front to mid-central, yeah. Something like a schwa. It’s interesting, really, since before the Second World War our accents were way more similar, but then-” and on and on she went, and Gold had to try very hard not to smile too much until he stepped behind her, slid his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. With her in flats, he could almost gather her under his chin and rest his head against hers as she talked. He could smile as much as he liked that way, with her eyes fixed to the graffiti, gesticulating as she often did when she talked about something that excited her. All he had to do was try to pay attention and nod or hum in agreement every once in a while.

And after a little while, even though she wasn’t quite through with her impromptu lecture on the phonological differences between New Zealand English and Australian English, she sort of melted against him, her voice lowering just the slightest bit, her arms no longer flailing about to illustrate her tale, because they had found his around her waist, her skin warm against his. It was that peculiar sensation again, prickling like a thin layer of static electricity between them. With her hands on his bare arms, Gold could finally agree that perhaps he should wear t-shirts more often.

Guided by those sparks, it didn’t take very long for the pair of them to find their way back to their hotel room, where Belle closed the door behind them and _sauntered_ up to him with a devious smirk. How was he ever supposed to get used to that look? That desire in her eyes? She was a miracle, and every time she flicked that switch from normal and cheery and sweet to downright seductive, it was like he was stalled at the top of a steep roller coaster ride; his heart beating in his throat and the blood rushing loudly through his veins.

“You know what’s good about these?” she asked, her fingers at the hem of his brand new t-shirt.  
“No,” he lied.  
“I can get you out of there quick.”

She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow, her fingers tightening around the fabric. He laughed softly but raised his arms in surrender. She giggled and pulled the fabric up and over his head.

Well. _Almost_ over his head. Her short stature meant that she couldn’t quite reach, and now he was stuck with his arms up over his head – blinded, disoriented, and embarrassed.

“Belle! A little help!”  
“Oops! Sorry!”

Her giggle had turned into full blown laughter, and then all of the sudden he went flying backwards onto the bed because she’d _pushed_ him. The minx had _pushed_ him, and by the sound of it, she thought it was absolutely hilarious to see him try to wriggle himself out of his temporary confines.

He was about to sit upright and free himself when the bed creaked and he felt her crawl near until her breath was on his neck, and then her lips, and then her tongue, and he was paralyzed. He felt her legs either side of him, so even though he couldn’t see, he knew she was hovering over him like a predator over its paralyzed prey.

“Move up on the bed,” she said. There was a familiar undercurrent to her voice that made him harden in his jeans.  
“Help me get the shirt off, first.”  
“Please?”

He didn’t stand a single chance. He’d _never_ stand a single chance. He still couldn’t see, but he felt her follow him on the bed as he scooted back, and he knew to stop moving up when he felt her pretty lips on his chest leaving kisses and moving slowly down. Her fingers fiddled with his belt, her teeth grazed the skin right above the waistband of his jeans, and _fuck_ – what was she up to?

“Belle...”  
“Shh.”

Her lips kissed their way up again, until they were at his collarbone and he could feel her fingers pull at the t-shirt. She was freeing him, finally. Well, almost. He closed his eyes as the fabric moved up and over his face and when he opened them, he was greeted with the sight of his impossible girlfriend ( _girlfriend!_ ) grinning down at him as if she had a secret.

“You can get that off yourself, I know. But I don’t want you to just now. Okay?”  
Oh god.  
“Alright.”

Why she still blushed in these situations was a mystery to him. If anyone had reason to blush, it was him, with all his insecurities and inhibitions. Certainly not the beautiful little devil with the bedroom eyes, doing that thing with her teeth and her lip she liked to do, hovering over him, sizing him up.

“See? T-shirts aren’t so bad,” she murmured, letting her grin grow wider. Fuck. No. No they weren’t. They weren’t bad at all. Bless whoever had invented them, actually, and bless this heatwave, too. But he couldn’t speak a single word while she had him pinned down with her lustful stare like that, so he just shook his head. And then nodded. Because he’d forgotten how she’d phrased the question. Was there even a question?

It didn’t matter, because she giggled softly and then kissed him, and whenever she did that, _nothing_ else mattered. It was a brief kiss, but it was deep, and he wished he could reach up and pull her down onto his body. Roll them over, make her feel what she’d done to him, kiss her like that until his mouth was sore – and he supposed he could, but there was something so fucking erotic about being willingly captive underneath this storm in a teacup, that he found he simply couldn’t bring himself to move his arms at all.

All he could do was look.

Wait. No. Never mind, he couldn’t even do that. Because she’d tugged his jeans down over his hips and before he could tell her to stop; she didn’t have to do that, she’d taken him in her mouth and stole every single fucking word he’d ever learned right out of his brain. He could barely breathe. Her mouth was hot and tight and perfect on him, and her tongue was doing things he now knew she’d hinted at when she kissed him just then, and there was no way he could last. Not with her hair falling softly on his thighs, not with her hands sneaking between him and the bed, scratching lightly at the skin and then just _grabbing_ him. Oh, but he had to look. How could he not look? And good fucking God she was staring right at him, watching him, and it was too much. He warned her; he fucking warned her, but she only went faster, sucked harder, pulled him closer and made him come so hard he couldn’t even make a single sound – just threw his head back, arched up and strained against the makeshift constraints until he could hear the seams begin to tear.

And then he fell back, his eyes shut, his mouth open, breathing like he’d just sprinted up the stairs. Fuck. _Fuck._ Belle. This glorious creature, this maddeningly beautiful woman, the death of him, the most precious thing he’d ever seen just made him come undone within minutes and when he opened his eyes to make sure she was okay, she was smiling. Just... smiling. Proud of herself. Like the cat who – no, no. No. Just no.

She tucked him away while he got the t-shirt off his arms and flung it somewhere it wouldn’t get in the way of the several consecutive retaliatory orgasms he was about to give her, but when he made a move to unzip her dress, she shook her head and gave him a softer smile.

“It’s okay. Not just yet,” she murmured.

She lay on her side right next to him and splayed her hand right in the middle of his bare chest. And then she just looked at him, and he looked right back at her, in complete awe of her magnificence. As they lay there and his heart slowed, he remembered her little story of when she ran into a stop sign simply because she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going, but was just _ever_ so excited about getting there. A bump on the head that turned a nasty yellowish green after a few days, she’d said. He reached over and brushed his fingers against the soft skin of her forehead, and there was no bump. (Of course not, it’d been at least four years since that happened.) With a sudden pang of some strange ache in his chest, Gold wondered if he was a stop sign and Belle was heading straight towards him with her eyes firmly shut and her arms wide open.

But he couldn’t very well just ask her if she’d even given the matter any thought before speaking it into existence like that, could he? She’d looked a little caught out when she referred to him as her boyfriend, but that wasn’t enough reason for him to just flat out ask her if she wanted to back out and pretend she’d never said that word. And _that_ was that little mini-Belle in the back of his head again in action, making sure he didn’t say anything particularly condescending or hurtful, and he was thankful for it. He imagined she was beyond tired of his insecurities, and he couldn’t blame her one bit, but this boyfriend thing was an itch he had to scratch, or else he’d break down and say something beyond stupid at a later point in time.

Belle was brave (which he admired) but also impulsive (which he adored) and they somehow always balanced each other out, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t both inch a bit closer to the center of the seesaw. As long as they moved at the same time. So carefully, he picked out his words, wriggled a little closer to her on the bed and smiled.

“So I’m your boyfriend, hm?” he murmured, his heart beating a little faster, hoping she couldn’t hear the sea of concern rising up from his core, in waves hitting the back of his throat – constricting it, changing his voice, making him sound nervous even to his own ears. Please don’t say no, he thought to himself. Please don’t take it back. Please tell me I’m not that stop sign. Don’t come crashing into me and break your gorgeous little head.  
“Yup,” she replied, beaming at him in that way that made him want to poke at her cheeks. Then, in a lowered voice and with a playful smirk, she added, “Unless you’ve got your eye on someone else.”  
He laughed and felt the anxiety melt away just a little bit to reveal that ever present undercurrent of playfulness that burbled and flowed between them.  
“I’m your girlfriend, then.” Her voice was almost a whisper, which he wasn’t quite sure had been her intention, because he saw the corners of her mouth tremble just a little bit, as if she was fighting to keep up that smile. It sounded like a question, too, and for a moment he saw his own insecurity reflected in her face, and it ached, it _hurt_ to know that she could even for a single second doubt his feelings for her, and...

Oh. That’s what it must have felt like for her this entire time. That’s what he’d been making her feel. That frantic feeling, that urge to shower her with lovely words, to kiss every inch of her body and drop to his knees in front of her and bid her, ‘Believe me! Please believe me! You are mine and I am yours!’

He took her hand, brought it up to his lips, kissed her soft skin and said, “My girlfriend.”

She smiled as if he’d just given her something gold and precious, her hand at his cheek and her lips finding his in a kiss that was just about the sweetest thing he’d ever felt.

“Now,” she started, letting her smile curl up into half a smirk, “I do believe there was the matter of a favor that needed returning?”  
“Really?” he replied, putting on his best look of feigned innocence. “I don’t recall. I was just about to take another nap, I think.”  
“Hey!”

Her fingers sank into the sensitive flesh just underneath his ribs and quickly, before she could find out that he was secretly rather ticklish, he rolled over to lie on top of her, his elbows either side of her so as to spare her the full weight of him, but she giggled and pulled him down completely with her arms wrapped tight around his neck, and he relented.

“Oh, right, yes. That.”

This was their last stop. In a few days, they’d be on a plane back to Maine, and there would be no more nights in unfamiliar beds, no more getting lost in strange cities, but here with his face in the crook of her neck and his lips against her skin, the faint flowery sweetness of her perfume and the scent of _her_ went straight to his head like a familiar high, and it was a very curious thing indeed that he’d never felt so much at home.


	7. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle and Professor Gold go home. And where exactly is that? Well, home might just be where the coffee, the confessions, the desperate fumbles and the pot stash are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you all for being so lovely throughout this process. It's been fun. <3
> 
> Secondly: Oops. My fingers slipped. Again. This entire fic was supposed to be 10k. Then I kept getting carried away and then all of the sudden it was nearing 20k, and I had a bit of a panicky moment during which the recipient of this fic was a marvelous help. This is the longest chapter. (7k, I think.)
> 
> Thirdly: I've learned my lesson and I won't be so hasty to say I've finished with this series. I don't have any immediate fic ideas, but I'm kind of fond of these two, now. I'm sure I'll come up with something in the future.
> 
> Lastly: No, seriously, thank you, you magnificent people.

Belle was tired. Content, but exhausted, and the low hum of the taxi’s engine was hypnotic in a way. She glanced over at Gold and he was staring out of the window with an absent look that made Belle suspect he was just as tired. Perhaps even more. The stress of flying must have worn him out completely. He hadn’t said it, exactly, but she knew he hated to fly. He tensed up during take-off and landing, and every time there was even just the slightest bit of turbulence, Belle could see his knuckles whiten. She held his hand whenever she noticed something like that. It seemed to help; he would stop staring into the distance with his eyebrows knitted together, flash her a quick nervous smile and release the breath he was holding.

It was nice to know that she could make him feel better. That her touch – a reminder of her presence – could mean a difference. It was a lovely feeling.

She watched the houses and the trees pass, blurring together in shapes and patches of color, just as hypnotic as the low steady growl of the engine lulling her into a certain state of mind that wasn’t quite sleep, but wasn’t exactly wakeful, either. Soothed by the vibrations and the late summer sun filtered to a strange nostalgic hue through the dirty taxi windows, she reached back in time as if trailing her fingers through a pool of memories – not quite catching them, but allowing them to slip away carelessly. There was one memory, though, that didn’t escape; bits and pieces of sights and sounds that got caught in the net, gathering itself, growing until the memory took form and she saw it, clear as day. Not blurry, but perhaps a bit soft-focus.

 

_She could remember a particularly terrible week, more than a year ago. She’d just broken up with her boyfriend, if she recalled correctly, but that wasn’t actually what had made her week such an awful one. It had just been a collection of small accumulated annoyances, glued together, all tangled up, making her want to crawl into bed and stay there. In fact, that was exactly what she would have done that day had Professor Gold’s class not been the one thing she’d been looking forward to. Definitely should have skipped the class before his, though, because that’s where she almost fell apart when the professor and a particularly unpleasant friend of her ex ganged up on her and ridiculed her analysis of the article they’d had to read for that day. They completely misconstrued her argument in the most childish and smuggest of ways, and made her want to pack her things and leave. She didn’t leave, of course. She just sat it through, painful though it was. Belle wasn’t one to run._

_Professor Gold’s quick but genuine smile as she entered the room and slid into her first row seat made her feel like she’d walked into a cabin with a roaring fireplace and a steaming mug of hot chocolate on the mantlepiece after trekking through a snowstorm for what felt like an eternity. She felt much better already, but she was so tired. Too tired to participate like she normally would. She kept her head down for most of the class, only looking up to smile at him when he made a joke no-one else picked up on. She didn’t take many notes. Just some keywords or dates, and an odd doodle here or there. Mostly she just let his voice soothe her and sneaked the occasional admiring glance at his handsome profile once or twice._

_“Ms. French, everything alright?” he asked her, the sudden nearness of his voice making her snap her head up in surprise. He was standing right in front of her, a curious look on his face. She’d been putting the finishing touches to a cute little house she’d been drawing in the margin of her notebook (with a little fenced in garden with a row of what she thought poplar trees looked like) and listening – at least that’s what she thought she’d been doing – but apparently she hadn’t even noticed him dismiss the class. She looked around in mild panic and saw the last of the students file out of the door._

_“Oh. I’m sorry. I was trying to pay attention, I promise. I just...”  
She trailed off and offered him an apologetic smile instead, which he returned with a little shrug.  
“That’s alright. We all have our off days.”  
“I’ll uh,” she said, pausing to swallow a lump in her throat and closing her notebook, “I’ll leave you to it.”_

_She started gathering her things and stuffing them unceremoniously into her bag, but when she realized he wasn’t actually moving away to go and gather his own things, Belle slowed to a halt and looked up. He was watching her, brow furrowed, eyes flitting over her face as if he was trying to find something, read something, figure something out, until his eyes locked onto hers, and in a slightly lower voice, asked her, “But is everything alright?”_

_That... sounded like he cared. She had almost told him yes, of course, everything was alright. That she hadn’t had much sleep, that was all, and it wouldn’t have been a lie. But she was just so incredibly tired, so worn down and so lonely for some reason that what she said instead was, “Professor Roberts decided to humiliate me in front of everyone today.” The truth._

_And when she said it, she felt the anger rise, the frustration bubble up from the pit of her stomach to her throat, threatening to make her cry. It took her all the strength she had left to keep herself composed, her grip tight around the pencil she had been about to stuff into her bag, her knuckles white. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. She’d probably sounded so immature just then, and now she was starting to feel sick to her stomach. She couldn’t even look at him. She just resumed stuffing her things into her bag so she could make a quick exit, but then just as she was about to put away the last remaining thing, it was snatched out right from under her nose by Professor Gold himself. So, now he had her eraser. Well. How was she supposed to react to that? She couldn’t run, now; she liked that eraser. It had served her well getting all those ridiculous little hearts off her notes before letting her friends copy them._

_“Did he?” said Professor Gold, studying the eraser in his hand, turning it round and round between his fingers, then handing it back to her. Bemused, Belle let him drop the thing in her upturned palm, then closed her fingers around it. It didn’t even sound like a question, but she nodded anyway. When she found the courage to make eye contact, she saw his jaw clench, his eyes dark and intense. Could it be that he didn’t like the man much, himself? There had been a hint of something decidedly unpleasant in his voice. Her suspicions were confirmed when, amazingly, she heard him mutter low under his breath, “The man’s a fucking idiot.”_

_She was so surprised, she laughed. She actually laughed for the first time in so many days, and it felt so good she almost wanted to cry. It’s funny how you can carry around so much dead emotional weight on your shoulders without really realizing how heavy a load it is, until someone sees you dragging yourself around with hunched shoulders and a bent back, and takes it upon him or herself to chip off a little bit of that weight and help you carry the load._

_“Can you keep a secret?” he asked with his eyes slightly narrowed and his crooked grin more charming than ever. She nodded meekly, intrigued.  
“He’s getting fired at the end of term.”  
“What?” she gasped, quite unable to hold back her grin. “Really? Why?”  
“I shouldn’t say,” he replied, waving away her question, shaking his head. But in the silence that followed, she saw his lips twist slowly into a smirk until with a silent laugh, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Ah, why not. He’s been accepting bribes for better grades.”  
“Oh my God. I thought those were just rumors! And he doesn’t know? I mean, from the way he was yucking it up earlier, I’d say he doesn’t.”  
“He hasn’t a clue. It’s just the president and the board. And you and I now, I suppose,” he mused, with a pleased little smile that made her feel even giddier for some reason.  
“You and I,” she repeated with a dreamy grin. And oh, wow, that was a strange thing to repeat like that, wasn’t it? Why had she even done that? It had just sounded so nice, that was all. God, this crush was getting to be dangerous. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks at a dizzying speed, so in a desperate attempt to save everything, she added, “I mean, I’ll keep this between us. Promise.”  
“I know you will,” he replied with a little nod._

_He stood and looked at her for a few seconds, while Belle’s heart grew warmer and stronger in her chest as if it were casting off the week’s burdens and injuries, to come out of it bigger and better. Stronger. She couldn’t just sit there and gawk at him like that, even if he did seemed to be gawking right back at her, so she put away her eraser, stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder._

_“Thank you,” she said. He gave her his devilish half smirk and replied, “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”_

_Yeah. No. This was getting to be too much. She’d have to get over him, soon. There was absolutely no excuse for her stomach to feel that fluttery just because her handsome, intelligent, funny and secretly-rather-sweet professor had noticed she was out of sorts and had tried – and succeeded – to cheer her up. No excuse._

_“See you next week, Ms. French. Take care.”  
“You too.”_

 

“Sweetheart, everything alright?”

The sound of his voice – the real deal, not the ghost of it – guided her out of her reverie and back into the backseat of the cab, and - oh. They’d stopped right in front of his pretty pink house. _Everything alright?_ Halfway between a dreamstate and reality, between past and present, smack dab in the middle of what was and what could have been, Belle smiled, reached over, slid her fingers into his hair and kissed him in that taxi and somehow kissed him in that classroom at the same time. He made a little soft noise of surprise, but then he kissed her back, and she felt his hands at her sides, firm and gentle, pulling her back into the moment, the memory slinking away and disappearing as if they were still driving and she’d let it float out of the window like a gum wrapper, fluttering away.

When they broke apart, he gave her an adorable little confused look and said, “Can you tell me what I did to deserve that so I can do it again?”  
“You already did,” she explained. She smiled at how that made him look even more lost, shrugged and gave his knee a reassuring squeeze before getting out of the car.

The sound of his front door falling shut behind them was comforting for some reason. She hadn’t heard it in so long. And as they stood there in his entrance hall surrounded by their bags and suitcases, the disturbed dust dancing in the warm light coming in through the colored glass and thought to herself how good it felt to be home, it hit her with a frightening chill that this was his home. Not hers.

She’d come crashing into his house with half her wardrobe and a considerable portion of her substantial collection of books without thinking, just because it felt right. It had felt so, so right not to leave these walls because _he_ dwelled within them. She hadn’t spent a single night in her own bed since their first date, and that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the weirdest thing in the world? Sometimes she forgot how impulsive she could be. She had this tendency to latch onto a wave of emotions and let it drag her away, riding high, until suddenly she lay washed up on the sand, a little bruised maybe, coughing up saltwater, tripping over seaweed tangled around her ankles. She’d offered her professor a joint a couple of months ago and now he was her boyfriend and most of her things were in his beautiful house. That wasn’t a thing that just happened to people.

Her bags were right next to his. On his floor. In his house. Shouldn’t they have been at her house? Shouldn’t they have driven past there and at least dropped off her things? They hadn’t even discussed it. They just climbed into the cab and when Gold gave his address, Belle hadn’t even noticed. Neither had he, apparently. This was strange. This was very, very strange, and now it felt like she was waiting for Gold to come to the same conclusion and then, well... She didn’t know what would happen then.

“Coffee?”  
“Hm?”  
“Coffee,” he repeated. He was halfway to the kitchen already, and she hadn’t noticed. “Would you like some?”  
“Oh. Yes, please.”

It was a nice enough late summer afternoon, so they moved to the garden where the air was warm and the sun cast dancing shadows in a pool of warm light on the little iron wrought table at which they sat. Birds sang loudly. Their coffee steamed. Whenever the trees swayed in such a way that the sun would hit his eyes, the darkness of them vanished, leaving them strangely golden in a way. Under the table, their legs touched. It wasn’t a conscious thing. They just fit together like that. Nice, though. Comforting.

“I don’t think we took a single picture,” Belle said after a while. Just as good a thing to say as any.  
“Do you wish we had?” he asked, just before putting his mug to his lips. She shook her head with a little smile, reached into her jeans pocket to pull out her phone and added, “But you’re especially gorgeous in this light, and I _do_ still need a contact picture for you...”

He laughed and instinctively looked down into his lap to let his hair hide his features, a reaction which Belle had anticipated. She was partly just teasing, anyway, but it would have been nice to have that picture of him. She was about to put her phone away, but then he softly said, “Oh, go on, then,” and she stopped, gave him a curious look and slowly, carefully inched her phone up as if she were scared to startle a particularly photogenic but flighty squirrel.

“Really?”  
“Yeah.”  
“You’re sure?”  
“Ask me one more time and I’ll change my mind.”

She grinned, rolled her eyes and held her phone up. She was right – the sun did make him look especially handsome; the light hitting his hair gave it an almost angelic, golden glow. Belle wasn’t going to push her luck and ask him to smile for the camera, but it turned out she didn’t even have to. It was a shy, embarrassed smile, but the boyish charm of it was absolutely perfect. So, quickly but with a steady grip, Belle took a picture.

“Done?”  
“Look!” she chimed, holding her phone out for him. He gave it a quick look, smiled and shrugged.  
“It’s alright.”  
“It’s better than alright. Maybe I’ll make it my wallpaper, too,” she teased, making him scoff. But she could tell he was flattered – that slightly embarrassed grin didn’t seem to want to leave his face.  
“You just have a way of finding my best angles,” he murmured into his mug. “You’re like that.”

Well. There he was, hiding again. Belle sighed and put her phone away. That certainly wasn’t just about the picture, but it had probably triggered it. It was like the man couldn’t possibly take a compliment without heaping a bunch of self-deprecating nonsense on top. This was mild, admittedly, but if she didn’t put a stop to it now, he would really get going, and she wasn’t up for any of that today.

“You don’t think I’m the only one who does that, right?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“You find my best angles, too.”

He blinked at her in confusion, laughed a low, almost bitter-sounding laugh and shook his head.  
“Sweetheart, I’d be hard pressed to find even a single bad angle from which to admire you, to be honest.”  
“Not true. You know I’m impulsive. That’s not a good thing.”  
“Well, perhaps you are a little bit impulsive, but that’s hardly-”  
“Did you not notice I all but moved into your home after only one date?”

Silence fell. She hadn’t... exactly meant to broach the subject in that less than elegant way. His eyes were wide, and the way his mouth opened and closed a few times made her think she’d snatched his words away from him. She quirked an eyebrow and that seemed to jolt him out of his daze; he sighed and sat back, tongue sliding over his lips for a split second.

“First of all, I think there are some mitigating circumstances in that regard,” he finally spoke. “The extended pining on both sides, mostly. That’s been going on for a while, hasn’t it?”  
“Yes, alright, but that still doesn’t mean I’m not completely insane for just sticking around the first time you let me into your house and hoping you wouldn’t notice.”  
“Wouldn’t notice?” he replied, a theatrical look of disbelief on his face. “You thought I wouldn’t notice the sweet, intelligent, irresponsibly attractive and endlessly amusing Australian in my bed every morning?”

She couldn’t help but giggle even though she’d meant to be serious.

“If you’re insane, so am I. I was keeping quiet, do you know that? Like I was convinced you’d up and leave if I said anything. As if somehow, you were just forgetting to go home at the end of each day, and if I said anything about it, you’d remember you had somewhere better to be and leave.”

Oh. Wow. Idiots, the pair of them. Hopeless, lovestruck idiots, and she wanted so desperately to say the words, now. To tell him she loved him and to hell with the consequences. What consequences, anyway? That he’d reject her? He’d not once given her a single reason to think that this strange, intense thing between them was one-sided. And what else could it be, if this wasn’t love? Infatuation, maybe, several months ago. A schoolgirl crush, perhaps, years ago. Lust, definitely, but it was not just that. Not now when the mere thought that they could have parted ways after graduation was almost violently painful. They had spent every single night in the past couple of months together, travelled to so many places and made it out still fond of one another. On the few occasions they bickered, they always aimed to work things out with kindness and understanding. There was no venom, no childishness. He took care of her when she was stoned out of her goddamn mind and convinced the room was about to collapse. She nursed him through a nasty hangover and _still_ enjoyed his presence.

And fine, alright, perhaps there was still a touch of obsession or infatuation involved, because Belle knew it couldn’t have been normal to want to spend every second of every day with someone. It was new to her, and it was intense and glorious and more than a little intoxicating, but she knew they wouldn’t be able to keep that up. They would need alone time, soon. Anyone would. But… It was just that the look in his eyes and the smile on his face as they sat in his garden and slowly started to realize how much trouble they were in felt so much like home.

It wasn’t this house. It was him. He felt like home.

That’s why she had texted her father in the airport to tell him she was fine, she’d had fun, she’d come visit soon. _Visit_. Her own house. Her father knew she was seeing someone older, but she hadn’t exactly mentioned the fact that it was her former professor, and that he was the one she’d been off on vacation with. And she just knew the two of them wouldn’t like each other. They were too different for that, and her father was too protective and stubborn to just trust her judgement without putting up a fight. (Oh. Well. Perhaps they weren’t that different, in one or two aspects.) But he deserved to know, he really did. She may have felt slightly guilty for keeping him in the dark like that, but oh, she didn’t regret a single second of any of it. She didn’t regret letting this thing that they had going for them sweep them away and throw them headlong into an adventure – an adventure that had made her the happiest she’d been in a long, long time.

“You didn’t whisk me away on this trip because you were scared I’d get bored of you if you didn’t keep me distracted, did you?” she asked, a playful grin on her face, leaning forward just a little bit with her hands around her coffee mug. He chuckled and leaned forward too, his elbows on the table and his face cupped in his hands. How annoyingly cute. That just made her want to take another picture. Or kiss him. Or both.  
“Oh no, I’ve been rumbled!” he teased with his charming half grin. But then he shook his head. “No, sweetheart. Well, not completely. Just a little bonus, I suppose.”  
“Well, good, because I can tell you you wasted a hell of a lot of money if that was your sole motivation.”  
“Is that so?”

The strange fluttery feeling in her stomach told her exactly what was going to happen. What she was going to say. It felt right, somehow, to say it now, with his smiling face right in front of her, hanging on to her every word. And yes, she was nervous. Oh God, she was so nervous, but why shouldn’t she say it? Maybe if she said it, she would calm down and she wouldn’t have this urge to stay with him every second of every day. Maybe they could grow. Stabilize. If they just said it out loud, maybe they could get even better together.

“Yeah,” she finally replied. Her heart was beating fast in her chest. Some hot, bright thing in her stomach was bouncing around, doing somersaults. “I didn’t sign up for expensive hotels and first class plane tickets; I signed up for you. And I don’t care if that’s here in this house, or in the Champagne province guzzling the eponymous stuff like it was free, or up on our roof back on campus, or even in a bloody shed for that matter, if that’s what it takes.”

The words flowed more freely than she’d expected up to now. She hadn’t clammed up or stuttered once, and he hadn’t tried to interrupt her or anything. He still had his head between his hands, and his grin had faded to this small smile she didn’t even think had any purpose or meaning. She saw his adam’s apple bob up and down, but he didn’t say a single word, as if he knew she wasn’t finished just yet, and he was waiting. It made her think he knew just what happening. What she was going to say. It made her heart sing, too, because she really, really didn’t want to have to convince him she was telling the truth just because he was in one of his self-loathing moods and couldn’t believe someone could... Her mouth was dry. The words burned. Her heart raced. She had to say it now.

“I love you,” she said.

The iron legs of his chair scraping on stone as he stood and leaned forward across the table, the loud, hollow thud and the _crack_ of his empty mug falling and breaking and a startled bird rustling its wings in a nearby rose bush, his hands in her hair and his lips on hers, and then absolute silence - except the words he wasn’t saying rang loud, deafening, resounding in her mind and in her heart. This was enough. This was more than enough, but still he broke away, his forehead pressed against hers, his breath warm on her lips, and said, “I love you too.”

His eyes were closed, almost clenched shut, and he looked so vulnerable it made her want to cry, so she stood up so he wouldn’t have to keep stooping over the table, pulled him close by the shoulders, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. If she kissed him, she couldn’t cry. That was just a fact. His hands slipped out of her hair to slide around her waist, and she melted, breaking the kiss to bury her face in his neck, his hair, his shoulder.

She didn’t know how long they were stood there for, in the setting sun. Breathing softly, holding each other tight. She wasn’t even sure who pulled away, first. And it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. He smiled at her and his face was a little red, his eyes a little watery (but maybe that was just her imagination, or even her own eyes tearing up) and all Belle could do was stand there and smile back.

“I rather liked that mug too, though, I have to say,” he muttered with an almost embarrassed laugh, glancing down at his feet. Belle followed his gaze and saw the mug shattered next to the table, and she laughed and gently poked him in the ribs.  
“Who cares about the mug! But that’s one way to kill the moment, I guess,” she teased.  
“Well it had to die somehow, didn’t it?”  
“True.”

They cleaned it up together, gathering the pieces in a dustpan and wrapping it in newspaper to be safe. It was as he rinsed out the surviving mug – hers – in his kitchen that Belle felt strongly as if she had to do the grown-up thing, even though she was on this incredibly high up cloud, miles away from anything and everything unpleasant, and the thought of getting her feet back on the ground almost made her feel sick.

“I was thinking maybe I should stay with my father for a couple of days,” she said. “I don’t want to go, but he needs to know what’s been going on.”  
Gold sighed deeply, didn’t even look up from the sink, but nodded.  
“I know, sweetheart,” he replied. He found a tea towel and set to work. “And I have to be honest with you; I don’t want you to leave. The thought of you sleeping somewhere else just seems so absurd, somehow.”

Absurd. Yes. That was precisely it. It seemed such a counterintuitive thing to do – to leave this house and exchange this man’s warm embrace at night for her empty bed. Well, not empty, exactly. Professor Snappy, the stuffed crocodile Gold had helped her win, would be there too, of course, but that was a meagre substitute for the real deal.

Still. She couldn’t keep putting it off forever.

“I agree. That’s why I’ll be back to bother you in a few days. And maybe we can have our third date in the mean time,” she said, her grin broad and playful.  
“Ah, I see! Yes, that would be pretty normal of us, wouldn’t it? For a change.”  
“You could come pick me up and drop me off again.”  
“And I could let your father kick me around for a bit and maybe threaten me with a shotgun if I don’t get you home on time.”  
“Not if I sneak you in through my bedroom window,” she mewled, quirking an eyebrow and putting on her best, most exaggeratedly suggestive smirk. “We’d have to be real quiet, though.”  
“Oh God, Belle, don’t even _joke_ ,” he cried.

They couldn’t stop laughing even as she took the mug and the tea towel away from him and pulled him close by the front of his shirt.  
“I’m kidding, scaredy cat,” she purred. She kissed him even though he was still laughing. A clumsy kiss – a silly one, just as welcome as the sweet ones or the ones that made her face flush and her heart beat faster.  
“Drive me home. The sooner I leave, the sooner I get back.”  
“Alright.”

It was only in the hall that her heart began to ache in a peculiar way. Like something was pulling at it, trying to pull her right back into the heart of the house. Wait, no, not the house – his arms. He was grabbing his car keys from the little bowl where he kept them, and her stomach flipped, her ribcage folding in tight and crushing her lungs, and there wasn’t a single cell in her body that wanted to walk out of that door. What was wrong with her? She’d said the words. She’d yielded, confessed, spilled her heart and had been given his in return, but still she felt this sense of urgency, of desperation and pre-emptive regret of lost time, each time she pictured herself alone in a different bed, without him. She was an idiot to think that she could temper the fire by saying the words out loud. They burned just as bright, just as hot in her chest – hotter still, actually, now that she had the sound of his voice telling her he loved her engraved in the records of her mind.

She didn’t want to leave. She’d spent most of her life without him. She didn’t have to deny herself the feel of his skin against hers tonight, too. Right?

“No,” she said, and she closed the distance between them. She took the car keys from his hand and blindly tossed them back into the bowl.  
“No?” he replied. From the look in his eyes, she knew it wasn’t a question. He knew what she wanted because he wanted the exact same thing. Absurd, he’d said. The thought of being without her for even a single night. Absurd.

“I’ll leave tomorrow,” she murmured quick, but not quick enough for her lips to stop moving before they hit his in a desperate kiss. She sank her fingers in his hair, pushed up against him, urging him to pull her closer which, when he did, made her moan against his lips.

“Yeah,” he murmured as she nipped and licked at his neck, “tomorrow’s better.”  
“I just,” she breathed heavily as he backed her into the door, crowding her body with his, “want you all of the time.”  
“Belle...”  
“It’s insane, I know, but it’s you. Just you. It’s like you- ” _Oh God_ , his teeth scraping against that spot where her shoulder curved into her neck, his breath hot and loud so close to her ear, “- like you unlocked something inside of me, and I-”  
“Belle,” he growled, pushing himself closer against her. He was hard already and she loved that he didn’t even try to hide it anymore. He used to be shy about it - apologetic, almost, as if he thought it impolite to want her so much - but not anymore. “It’s alright, Belle.”

Yeah. Yeah, it was. No more words.

With his one hand grabbing her and pulling her closer and the other sliding down the front of her jeans, Belle had to wrap her arms tight around his neck because he was too good at this; good at making her come like that, and if she didn’t hold on tight, her buckling knees would send her crashing straight to the floor into a whimpering convulsing mess, soon. _Really_ soon, because had she mentioned he was good at this?

He made her come loudly against his front door before they made it to the bed - before they’d even taken off any clothes. And it hadn’t even been that long, but she’d missed him inside of her so much she couldn’t help but wrap her limbs around him and pull him down, keep him a willing prisoner between her thighs while his lips near her ear moved against her skin to form breathily whispered words she never in a million years imagined would make her moan like that, but that was her thing now, apparently, as long as it was his voice whispering them. As long as it was his voice asking her what she liked, telling her what she did to him, what she felt like, what he wanted… Anything. Somehow he would know when she was right on the edge, and he’d murmur something to push her over completely and irrevocably, and she shook underneath him, her teeth sinking into the flesh of his shoulder, his hand at the back of her head, fingers digging into her hair as if he _liked_ it. He stole her words when he’d pulled her strings and made her come undone like that; all but three, which she whispered softly in his ear as she felt him tense up and come not too long after she did.

“I love you too, Belle,” came his voice in the aftermath of their storm of clutching limbs and urgent murmurs. He was a heavy weight on top of her and there was a layer of sweat between them, their chests heaving.  
“Yeah?” she breathed against his neck, feeling giddy all of the sudden. “Haven’t changed your mind, then?”  
“Well, I’ve given it some thought,” he replied, teasing in his deadpan voice, “and no; haven’t changed my mind. Still very much in love with you.”

His lips brushed hers in a soft kiss, but she couldn’t seem to stop smiling, which made a proper kiss rather difficult, so he gave up with a soft laugh and kissed the corner of her mouth instead. In love. That sounded really good, too. Made her belly feel all warm. Didn’t help the giddy feeling much, either. He rolled away to lie next to her and just smiled, his eyes dark in this light but full of something that looked exactly like how she _felt_. Happy, she guessed.

Yeah. That was it.

“Good,” she giggled, reaching out for his hand, grabbing it, squeezing it tight. “That’s good. Be a bit awkward, wouldn’t it?”  
“Just a bit, yeah,” he replied, bringing their hands up to his lips so he could kiss the back of hers. She returned the gesture; placed a soft kiss on the back of his hand and enjoyed the way that made him shake his head and try to frown while grinning uncontrollably all the same, as if she’d just broken him by being cute. Well, he started it. He really should have been prepared to take it if he insisted on dishing it out like that, the big adorable grump.

They ended up in his living room after a quick shower, with her cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, rolling them a joint, and him flipping through the channels with an increasingly dour look on his face that made Belle want to poke him in the ribs and tell him to lighten up – they’d be too high to care about quality programming in a minute. He clicked the TV off and with a pained groan slid off of the sofa to sit himself next to her instead. With his arms folded on the table and his head resting on his arms, he looked at her fingers as she sprinkled his weed across the length of the rolling paper. He just looked on, in silence, with a hint of a smile. A little distant and dreamy, somehow.

“What’re you thinking about, handsome?” she asked, flashing him a quick smile.  
“Summer’s almost over.”  
“I guess it is.”

She licked the paper, rolled and tucked the joint, twisted the end and murmured thanks when Gold slid her his lighter across the table. With the flame at the twisted end, Belle watched the paper go up in smoke, curling up towards the ceiling. She reached over to tuck the other end between his lips and lit it for him. His cheeks hollowed, his eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and the end of the joint burned a bright orange.

“I don’t even know what you were planning to do after you graduated,” he said, words and smoke spilling from his lips, “and I just dragged you onto a plane.”  
“If anyone did any dragging, it was me,” she said. “You know, anyway.”  
“I do?”  
“Yeah. We talked about it in your office a couple of years ago.”  
“Did we?”

She furrowed her brow and took the joint from him. Did he really not remember?

“It was February, I think. I came to your office with some poorly thought out excuse-”  
“Excuse? You really did that?” he asked. She raised an eyebrow, nodded and took a long, deep drag to fill her lungs with smoke. She tried to keep it in long enough, but the way he looked so oddly flattered at her revelation made her want to laugh, so she exhaled before she had a coughing fit.  
“I did. Like, a ton. I can’t believe that’s news to you, actually. But anyway, I got you to explain the thing I pretended needed explaining, and then we got to chatting about other things, like we often did.”  
He took the joint from her and took another hit, nodding for her to continue.  
“You asked me what my plans were. I said it didn’t matter to me where I ended up in life, because-”  
“Because you have faith in yourself to find the good in any situation.”  
“So you remember.”  
“I do, now. I also remember not really knowing what you meant by that.”  
She laughed and shrugged, taking the joint from between his fingers and inhaling one, twice, quickly.  
“I suspected as much. You were smiling and nodding but I didn’t get the impression I was making a lot of sense.”  
“You were probably making sense, love. Could very well have been my own fault for letting your skirt distract me,” he joked, shooting her a mischievous grin.

Belle laughed and bumped her shoulder into his, mindful not to shove him too hard and send the joint flying to the floor. That was nonsense and they both knew it. He never once made her feel like she was being ogled. He was not that kind of man, and somehow she’d always known that. The sudden movement had made her become aware of the high, though, her brain a little bit _spinny_ in her skull, now.

“Well. In practical terms, what it means is I’m going to take my time looking for a job that feels right. I’m not going to be picky, but I’ve got some money saved up, so there’s no rush.”  
“Sounds sensible,” he agreed.  
“Oh, it gets better,” she teased, passing the joint back to him for him to light. It had gone out. He gazed at her with the cigarette between his lips, the bright orange flame of his lighter painting his tired but handsome face in a warm glow that somehow made his eyes look even darker.  
“Does it?” he replied, smoke escaping from his lips as he tried not to let them curl into a smile.  
“Mm. Because there’s also the part where I’m going to spend the rest of my time snogging my handsome boyfriend and smoking all of his weed.”

His laughter sounded delicious to her then, so close to her ear as they sat on the floor for no good reason, side by side, backs resting against the sofa. His legs were stretched out under the coffee table, but hers were still crossed, and he put his big, warm hand on her knee and gave it a soft squeeze.

“Maybe I could come bring you lunch at work. Neglect to tell you about the special ingredient in the brownies I baked you and stick around to see how well you keep up that scary professor act when you’re as high as I was back in Amsterdam.”

Well that almost sounded like a _giggle_ , there, and Belle couldn’t help but join in. Laughter came easy with their heads in the clouds like that, but especially when they kept setting each other off in this strange, curious giggle loop. But she still had a point to make, here - an important one - so she forced her grin down and gave him a strong, pointed look.

“Sound good?”  
“That does sound like a good plan,” he admitted with a faint smile.  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah.”  
“So now will you stop worrying that you’re distracting me from some sort of abstract greater purpose and just go with it?”

He looked at her for a moment, cigarette between his lips, amusement twinkling in his eyes. She put her hand on top of his, still perched on her knee, and he took the joint from between his lips so he could lean over to kiss her sweetly on the cheek.

“I will,” he murmured as he sat back again, giving her a lazy but meaningful smile. “If you promise to stop worrying that this house isn’t just as much your home as it is mine.”

Oh. This man. This impossible man who seemed so clueless sometimes; he knew. He’d read her like an open book and he knew exactly what her fears were, what she wanted, what she couldn’t quite ask him, and he said the words for her, because that’s how lovely a person he was. Well, it made sense, she supposed. They were in love, after all.

“I promise.”  
“Good.”

And she kept her promise. She didn’t have a single worry there on the hardwood floor with his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, passing the ever shrinking joint between them. He’d turned the TV back on to provide them with flickering images and soft background noises for them to giggle at in between kisses and lungfuls of smoke. Somehow the pillows and the throw blanket had made it down from the sofa and now they had themselves a little nest of soft things to cuddle up in. The world beyond the windows was covered in a thick veil of impermeable darkness, now, and it occurred to Belle that the living room may very well have been the interior of a ship in the middle of a calm sea at night. Just the two of them drifting on the gentle waves of a warm ocean, because beyond the deep black of those windows, there could be anything. It didn’t matter what.

Because if they were close enough to touch, they were home. Wherever they were.


End file.
